


toffee

by ruruka



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Non-Despair, Kissing, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Recreational Drug Use, Romance, Slow Burn, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-08-19 11:00:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 45,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8203252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka
Summary: he really can't stand his across the hall neighbor. really.





	1. Chapter 1

It is, in fact, possible to despise every single being on the planet. Togami Byakuya is living proof of such a feat.

Common enough, although prohibited upon favored grounds, is finding abhorrence for a living mate. Tight quarters lead to tension in any situation. But he does not hate his roommate, because he does not have one to hate. A Togami never, not once, not ever, settles for anything other than absolute recognizable perfection. Perfection to him, is his very own dorm room, not having to constantly caterwaul complaints to a lesser whom should leave their messes behind. The substantial fee to earn such a right has proved worthy tenfold, though he's not quite sure he's entirely pleased- as if it's rare of him not to be. He's not quite sure he's entirely pleased that, after having gone through the effort of earning a single's suite, his head still rings with the latent shrill of muted music through the drywall.

And that in itself's worth lobotomizing whomever's the perpetrator, he thinks; the smoke under the door only twists salt into the searing, gory wound.

If he had the choice between standing in the hallway at one:thirteen ante meridiem, or being tucked in with a metaphysics textbook in his lap- it's a wayward race of unfair victor, really. But he's there regardless, arms folded and nose turned high. At the very least, the noise halts after his knuckles tap curt against the door. Waiting saps up less than a minute of his time, and it is then that he's no longer solo in the threshold.

Expectations do not coincide with what reality that faces him, no piercings or tattoos or any punk rocker/yankii gang boy paraphernalia of the sort. Quite the opposite in fact; he thinks this kid could only ever play intimidating to scuttling garden ants (and even then would do them no harm). He's _tiny,_ in a precious sort of way, and he looks upward with the stun of gorgeously full and only slightly pink-tinted hazel eyes.

Togami's a frozen fool in the doorway, arms folded and nose dropped low to peer at this stranger like a gawking buffoon with no self control. Surely he's to be uncomfortable- which proves true in moments following, when his glance darts in a frenzy, and the only reason Togami knows he's spoken is because he was staring at the plush of his lips.

Very nearly does he beg repetition, though thinks it befitting not of a prowess laced superior, so he touches his glasses and clears his throat and introduces himself the way any benevolent cross the hall neighbor would. "Turn that wretched sound off, or I'm reporting you to the RA."

He realizes that he's never known anyone besides himself to concomitantly fit the standards of both attractive and intelligent, proving no damper to his theory now. "Uhh...you mean the music?"

Togami hopes the narrow to his eyes gives off a vibe of affright. "Yes. See to it that you do not disturb me again."

"Oh-!" Suddenly, as if a spell of intellectuality has been cast about him, he bows forward. "I'm sorry. We'll be more quiet."

Care comes not for who the second member of _we_ is. His heel turn is swift and practiced, and he keeps certain that his voice is as well, when he leaves it to linger over a shoulder. "And don't leave your incense burning all night. It smells bad enough, there needn't already be a fire the first week here, too."

The wisdom folds like curtains around its receiver- of whom has the audacity to _chortle_ in reply, mingling with his call, "Thank you for the tip. Goodnight!"

He'd reply with a genial parting, but he's just not the type of person to be affable post midnight. What irks him- besides _everything_ about this newfound idiot -is that he's yet to finish his sharp click of steps back past his own before the door closes behind him. And that's _rude_ , because...he likes to make an exit. So far, he's no positive things to list of his hallway mate (or there of the plural, evidently, though he knows not of the second), but a scroll for a kilometer's jaunt of criticism.

Then it's a forty-one-k marathon, because, apparently, having spoken to someone once is an invitation to repeat it. He doesn't catch that tidbit's backing support, does not understand why it is that they've been in the same Calculus class for the whole year, however meager aside, and he chooses _now_ to move his seat the the back corner of the room to be aside him.

"Hey," and his smile is endearing, because he's a charmer without trying. "Sorry again about last night. My roommate doesn't really understand the concept of 'quiet'."

Togami wonders what _sorry again_ even _means_ , as if a single apology does not serve sufficient; it alludes more so to an excuse for further conversation.

Togami wonders why the fuck this guy wants to talk to him again.

Students file ambient around them. He can feel the eyes burning into the side of his face, can sense the subtlety to the curious lightning though them. The response fizzles like poprocks on his tongue. _It's fine-_ he swallows it dryly back. Like hell will he bid this person the glory of conversation. That would give him the wrong idea, the idea that they're _acquaintances_ , who should shake greetings and exchange names, and that just is not his forte.

"Anyways, I'm Naegi," he says, right hand extending outward. "I'm glad I know someone in this class, now. Sitting alone kinda sucks."

_Oh, joy, he plans to stay._ His eyes roll. "...Togami," floods out before he can dam it.

"Cool," this... _Naegi_ shoots back with. His expression relays more ease than Togami's ever felt in all his days combined. He's not yet sure what to make of him, besides a vexation. There's an inward click, tangible not, and he recalls his opinions in the earliest hours of prior night. What'd he thought him to be- _attractive?_ Ludicrous. Togami buries his attention into his computer screen of notes from last class. He taps idly below the keyboard. Seats in the lecture hall claim each a person until no more can be filled, and the professor's six minutes late, though he's never known a day yet upon which they weren't. There's a zipping and a tapping and a whoosh of flipping paper aside him, nettling just enough to capture his glance. Naegi turns a thick notebook to a page half scrawled upon, digging the tip of his pen into an empty margin. Togami's never known a college student who doodles in their notebook, even less so in purple gel ink. Those icy daggers behind his lenses swivel another time, crossing one leg over the other beneath the desk. Impatience gnaws his ribcage.

Someone whispers in his vicinity about leaving after fifteen minutes without a teacher, which he scoffs audibly at; he detests that these are who he must call _peers_. The scribbling to his side pauses, and those wide navy greens are on him again. Togami meets them, face blaring scowl, and Naegi looks as though he makes to speak, interjected by the frazzled entrance of their instructor.

It comes later- the speaking, that is -in a sudden biting murmur in the midst of the mile-a-minute lecture. "Do you get this?"

He hates to admit that it leaves an error on his current line of typing. To the inquiry comes, "Yes," and nothing more, because he didn't ask for any sort of explanation.

Evidently, he doesn't plan to, only so does he laugh and say, "Of course you do. Everyone with glasses is smart."

Type, click, clatter, backspace. "My eyewear has nothing to do with my intelligence."

"Fair enough." _Still_ , that airy little smirk remains in Togami's peripheral. It digs together his molars. Naegi does not continue, does not utter another syllable, until the bell draws end to the period, and the professor is shouting homework assignments over the shuffle of disperse.

"See you later," is what he _does_ say, lifting a hand from its clutch over a backpack strap to swish each finger in parting goodbye. And curt as any, Togami spares him no reciprocation, takes brisk with his legs past him.

The campus is a portrait of autumn itself. With the crisp of each honey orange leaf beneath his steps, he loathes the outdoors even more. Breeze makes him wish he'd dressed more appropriately, but like hell would he conceal the stark lengths of his Armani with an overcoat. He ignores the shiver scaling his spine with all the modesty man can possess.

He cannot ignore, however, the unmistakable _crunch_ of fallen leaves trailing behind him. His left shoulder earns a glance over; and, of course, it's _him_ , attention focused on the phone in his hand as he edges further direction.

Esteemed, regal, Togami makes to question why he's being _stalked_ by this person (whom, again, he's just barely on the cusp of acquaintance with), when he recalls, regal and esteemed, that they take residence in the same building. He walks a notch quicker, because there's absolutely no chance he'll be caught entering with him, as if they're together, or something. Not- no, not _together_ together. Togami sears at the cheekbones, blames it on the biting fall wind. He hadn't meant that sort of together. Together, as in, anywhere near. Claiming a vicinity of less than fifty feet makes his guts tighten in thinly repressed irritation. Like now, and then, and now, when he's not permitted the slowing of himself in thought (but it's happened regardless) and there's _someone_ in front of him, and- for fuck's sake, he's holding the door open for him, and Togami would rather take rest six feet below ground than accept his politeness.

Naegi rocks heel to toe in idle waiting, dipping free hand into a pocket of his beige jacket. He perks once Togami's approached near enough. Briefly, he graces him with his expressionless gaze, then turns to elbow through the twin door of the set. The stairs vanish behind him as swift as he can manage.

Whatever _feeling_ that's niggling his insides is ignored in favor of things dropped to desk top and shoes left aside the doorframe. Eleven to noon, Calculus is his latest scheduled class, as he's a compulsive need to get everything done with as soon as humanly possible. He has, now, until seven tomorrow's morning to busy himself with what he should so please. And what he should so please currently, is taking invalid state in the midst of pristine satin comforters. He does so with splendor.

But why should his mind ever allow him rest? The buzz of it's a discordant ambiance to his desired nothing.

He _sighs_ , leans to catch the strap of his canvas bag from where it hangs on a closeby chair. Heat whirs from his computer's bottom as soon as it's laid on his chest and switched to on. He thinks to distract himself with the completion of assignments, or at the very least a match of solitaire. He thinks to distract himself with _anything_ other than the tingling idea of- of _whatever_ is tormenting his ease. Whatever.

Then he thinks, because he tends to partake in a lot of that, he thinks that he should have applied to a better university where the internet actually fucking _connects_ in his room. The device snaps shut with a tempered growl.

Deter him, this blockade will _not._

Before departing, this time, he chooses to dangle scarf of cobalt cotton around his shoulders. He hasn't a clue why this season has chosen to be so godforsakenly bitter, though it aids null to his tenor.

Neither does it spill about him mirth to find that, in his escape to siphon WI-FI from the nearest known hotspot, there's a beckoning at him from a familiar form.

"Small world, huh?" Naegi grins around the plastic top of his drink. The hole-in-the-wall-Starbucks-wannabe café is heavy in customers clinging to steaming mugs and crumbly pastries. They're, at least, not rude enough in collective chatter to play ill to coherent thought. Togami glances round absently, and of course, of course, of hell-sent manifested toxin course, there's but a single empty place for him to exist. And Naegi's gesturing to it from his seat just leftward of the entrance. Of course.

"I thought you'd gone to your room," he mumbles as he takes it, ducking beneath the strap of his bag to lean it against the metal leg of the chair. His back is to the plexiglass blaring to the outside world, facing toward the other's stupid faceful of joviality.

"I was." His teeth break through the top of a muffin. He swallows the mess of blueberries and crystallized sugar before continuing, "But, tie on the doorknob, so."

"So?" repeats back at him. Togami's eyes fall more slender in peculiarity.

_"So,_ I didn't want to walk in on that." He laughs, as if he's heard something worth that reaction. More mocha caffeine-bomb works its way past his tongue. "Plus, my next class is in a half hour, anyway."

Asking of what course is just behind his teeth, when Togami sparks into realizing he's almost holding an actual conversation, something so _highly_ abhorrent he nearly sneers. The original intent of taking refuge here returns in a deft opening of computer to the table. In the corner of the screen, four bars flash before filling solid. Success.

"Oh, right-" Naegi says like his memory's been suddenly jogged. "What was that math thing we were supposed to do for homework? I wasn't really listening."

"It's on his website." The answer to him seems a touch too harsh in its arrival speed. Either way, Naegi nods his head into another bite of muffin, so Togami doesn't dwell any more on it.

Silence, where it usually carries opulence, drips now a line of strangeness. He cannot locate certitude as to rationale, but he's a glimpse above his screen to ensure his other- _the_ other -does not sense likewise. Because as much as he cares not for this person, he's not keen on being himself an uncomfortable force. But Naegi does not radiate the slightest bit of awkward measure; he leans back, one hand wrapped around his cup and the other around his cell phone ( _again_ , Togami notes). It doesn't seem weird to him, so neither will it afflict himself, he decides, just now selecting to open a browser.

He works for several minutes on what would take a simpleton hours, and there's a telltale little _click_ of a lock noise and two sneaker bottoms meeting tile. "I gotta get going." A wrapper crumples in one fist. Words come next to contradict his idle simper. "I'm probably going to be late, anyway."

Togami, truly, does not care. He bids him a nod, though, and ignores his next voicing of, "See you later, Togami," because, A) that's just exactly what he said the last time they parted, and B) he's not sure he likes the way his name sounds on this stranger's mouth. And, furthermore, he hopes he doesn't _see him later_. He'd be better off seeing no one later, or ever again, for that matter. Companionship's a very bad good thing, in his mind.

He _sees him later_ two days past their string of the several coincidental meetings. Togami's refused to lay step back into that coffee shop, no matter how godawful his internet finicks. Though, no matter again, no matter how much he wishes to feign ill, he cannot be truant to class without reason. He reasons with himself that avoiding annoyances is a good enough reason, but he reasons back that it's not a reasonable reason, and that makes him scowl at the fact that he's so skilled a debater that he cannot even refuse himself.

He takes his seat at ten:fifty-two, the rest of the class in the eight minutes that follow, and the professor eight later. And yet, he's a loner at his back table meant for a duo. And yet, that...well it worries him, because, what the fuck, Naegi's supposed to be here and he's not, and that's more annoying to Togami than if he _were_. Another note adds to the bottom of his list: _irresponsible_.

That is most assuredly the only thing that bothers him about his absence.

That is most definitely the only reason he finds himself with a hand poised before the oak of a door that isn't his own at precisely twelve:ten that afternoon.

Knock.

For what, his intellect begs, is the point of this endeavor, to which his impulsiveness answers with no clues.

Knock. Knock.

The knob's sudden squirming pushes him back a step. He folds his arms, presenting scorn to the clearing entryway. His muscles lose their terse contraction when he sees him, alive and unharmed. As if he were worried, or something stupid. Togami's scoff harmonizes to Naegi's yawn, covering it with an elbow still marred in the temporary lines left by bed sheets.

"T..." he begins eloquently. Blink. "Togami..? What are- What's up?"

"What's up," he mocks, and his exasperation is more at his own asininity than that of the other, "is that you've evidently slept through half of the day without even taking notice."

" _Huh?_ " His lips match his eyes in their circular shape, and he turns to the red LED blinking at his desk. "Oh, shit."

Then Togami's a petulant toddler starved for attention that is instead projected to another. Naegi, in miraculous haste, scrambles to yank open the shutters, likewise to throw slide to his closet. Togami ignores the catastrophe of strewn clothing in favor of focusing on the action elsewhere. A pillow thwaps the mess of blankets in the bed to the far left. "Dude, wake up. It's twelve. We have Trig in twenty minutes."

The monster stirs beneath its dome of bedding. Togami is finally greeted by what he'd earlier envisioned; _here's_ the pierced up punk that fits faultlessly his fantasy of a vexing fratboy. He pokes his head out, flaming strands of a clearly artificial hue fall ungelled and messy, and- _god_ , Togami can hardly imagine what would ever possess someone to stick a stud in their _chin_ like that, but it's there, as are multiple others, such as the one impaling his tongue that catches early afternoon sunlight as he speaks. "The fuck d'ya mean, it's noon? This some kinda bullshit prank? 'Cause I ain't in the mood."

Naegi scowls, eyebrows knit and mouth tucked south, and Togami realizes it's the first time he's ever witnessed him do so. His pajama flannels pool to his ankles, and the jeans he goes to replace them are quickly tugged off again and tossed to their apparent true owner. "I'm serious, Kuwata. Get up."

The top sheet untangles with flourish from his bare legs- bare _everything_ , save for a low-hemmed pair of boxers, the third party notices in disdain. Kuwata shoves his legs into the bottoms thrown at him, then shoulders his roommate out of his path to grapple to complete the outfit.

"I really owe you one, Togami," Naegi says, still frazzled, as he shucks a zip-up over his rumpled black tee.

He makes to flick back disinterest, when instead that thug steals crudely the floor. "Togami?" He butchers the pronunciation, though the owner of the name corrects him not, instead bristles when he approaches nearer. There's a studious moment where time does not pass, then there's a grin that of a wolf's spread over Kuwata's studded face. "So you're the-"

"We _really_ need to go, Kuwata," urges Naegi, too curt to be true. He ushers them both into the corridor, clicking shut the barrier to their dorm room. "See you later, Togami. Thanks again!"

He watches the fervor that leads them opposite, watches the shared jabbing of elbows and stunted hissing speech all the way to the top of the staircase. Quiet echoes back to him. His arms drop to each a side.

"So I'm the _what?!_ "

Not to be petty or vain or posh, but of all the happenings in the swift span of wild minutes just now, the one pertaining himself had caught his curiosity most- second only to the fact that Naegi'd thought it not odd at all to undress before a stranger, and that still in his mind in the impression of his calves and thighs. A quiver's worth of arrows bite contempt into his veins.

But he's the what, he's the _what?_ The guy from across the hall? The multitalented and inanely hot guy with a four point one GPA in the report card of life from across the hall? The options expand. Togami deems he cannot pinpoint just exactly what was to be said of him without some sort of clairvoyant gift. And regardless of how often the freak in his Contemporary Social Studies class offers him a thirty percent accurate fortune, such a feat is nonexistent in the real world. So, he settles for the grating feeling in his abdomen, and sets to minding himself behind the closure of his dormitory. Closure- or less so, perhaps; he decides upon leaving ajar his entrance, if not for the hope of hearing their return, then for...well, that's really his only reason. Bizarre it may be, but he refuses to allow his wonderings go unanswered.

Then there's drool on his notebook and a crick in his spine, and the sunshine has long since tread farewell in way of evening's melty dust.

He'd never admit to the yelp of startled heart that leaves him upon the hand to his shoulder, but he doesn't have to, because Naegi's heard it first hand, heard it and seen the humiliated pink to his ears, and he'd smiled his sorrow down at his seated form.

"Sorry, did I scare you?"

His back strikes postured perfectly in a rush to appear elegant. A rush, much similar to the one that boggles his head and blurs his vision. He pinches his nose's bridge. It paints realization over him that his face is naked of its usual accessory, and he fumbles to shove unceremoniously the specs back on.

Instead of answering the question he's already forgotten, he poses his own. "What the hell are you doing in my room?"

Frozen, paused, halted; they're a simultaneous staring/glaring match of crackling hearth. Togami blinks, blinks, and shrugs away the weight from his shoulder. Naegi claims his hand, raises them both before him like a dainty defender.

"Sorry, sorry," he repeats. "I was going to go across campus and ask my friend for help with some homework- you'd probably like her, actually. She's really smart." Then he shakes his head. "Anyway, I saw your door was open, and I figured you'd know what you're doing, too, so, uh, anyway," his feet shuffle against the carpeting, eyes cast elsewhere. "Can you...help me out?"

Never has Togami met someone who can palaver on so well as this someone can.

"Help you..." is gradually spread. "with what, exactly?"

_No_ never exchanges between them, which Naegi takes as an invitation. A worksheet leaves his pocket and unfolds onto the desk, while he drags a chair from the opposing side to sit beside him. He explains of it what he can, which is virtually nothing, but Togami understands that it's taken from a lesson on the conjugation of English verbs. When he admits that the class has always been one he struggles in, Togami finds it unnecessary information; he's already collected as much from the fact that he's finding difficulty in something they've been learning since the first years of high school. He follows the guidance of clipped instructions on turning past tense to future, pen scribbling messy answers on blank lines.

Togami's corrections are nothing if not condescending, though he's not entirely unimpressed with the boy's ability to catch onto things. As he scans over the finished worksheet in palpable disinterest, something new presses a blade against his brain. "Why are you taking two math courses?"

"What?" From his teeter forward, Naegi drops himself back.

A pointed, scalding huff. "Obviously you're in Calculus, and I recall you mentioning Trigonometry this morning. Are you majoring in mathematics?"

Naegi's always laughing, it seems. Now is no exception. A chime of ebullient amusement leaves him. "Yeah, right." Springs of brunette flounce with his shake. "I'm just getting all the boring stuff out of the way this year. I actually haven't decided what I'm gonna do, yet. I have four years to figure it out, though, so I'm not too stressed."

"Clearly," he murmurs, then slaps the paper to the hardwood top. "If I were you, I'd stay away from foreign language."

"Oh, yeah, absolutely," he grins, and Togami grimaces at the way he so haphazardly crams the paper into his coat pocket again. He tips back into his seat, gleaming sight to the dusk of early evening through the wide windows. "What about you?"

_What about him?_ He raises a questioning look, but, _oh_ \- "Business."

"Oh, wow," Naegi admires. "So you're gonna be, like, successful."

"Going to be?" Even in his only-been-awake-twenty-minutes state of being, Togami Byakuya is royal as ever, limbs folded compact and eyes ablaze in shining superiority.

Shining inferiority glints in Naegi's contended expression. "Well...I don't know. No one really has their life together yet. We're all just kids in college"

"I can assure you, I'm much more than just a _college kid_ ," he scoffs. "Not positive the same can be said for you."

"Nah, probably not," Naegi says. He stands to tuck the chair back where he'd found it, and stretches his arms above him. "I'm trying my best, though."

Aside from the disappointment that his shirt's long enough to not be dragged upward by his stretching, Togami takes a twinge of irritation at the tone he's been served. Unintentional or otherwise, he's glad Naegi chooses then to toss him a goodbye coupled with appreciation for his assistance, and exits in a humble one-two of steps and door.

Whether it be the length of his day's repose, or the sour taste left from lingering words, Togami finds sleep the coup of a deity when he finally does try.


	2. Chapter 2

Autumn is ugly.

He feels as though he's shared this oration, but feels as though it's enough part of his life's creed to reiterate.

Autumn is _ugly._ And it's his favorite season of the year.

Autumn is ugly, but springtime is hideous, but winter is revolting, but summer- summer is the personal craft of lucifer himself, and he needn't even think of it now. So, autumn may be vile angles in a three-sixty rotation, but he's content enough with it not to hole away in his room until it ceases. The thing about it, though, is that it _drags_. It drags on through dreary, wet September and the chokehold of October, which every moron on the block seems to take as an excuse to treat thirty one days as if they're all the month's final holiday (one he cannot stand, naturally, because what _can_ he stand?). And a touch over halfway though, on the month's seventeenth, it's an unfortunate day upon which eleven AM finds his ass in the seat of the room designated for solving derivatives and integrals.

And on this month's seventeenth, Naegi Makoto- the first name of which he'd learned through their continuous _coincidental_ meetings -Naegi Makoto is in an absolutely _putrid_ mood.

"Wanna hear something absolutely _ridiculous_?" is his greeting that morning, clunking an expensive textbook to the tabletop and dropping his bag behind his seat.

"Not particularly," Togami mumbles, eyeing him vaguely, though not sans intrigue. "But go on."

The cover to aforementioned book smacks against the table. He produces from the front a stapled stack of several papers. They thrust toward Togami, who lifts a hand from its fold to accept it. His lips twist into a disenchanted frown.

"A _forty?_ " he reads of the red ink at the front paper's top margin. "How did you even manage that?"

"The real question," Naegi shoots back, aura a tetchy sulk, "is how that teacher expects us to write three full pages in perfect English after only a month of classes. It's crazy! I can hardly write a paragraph with no mistakes."

With a _tch_ of tongue to teeth, Togami peruses the introduction. Two lines in, and he realizes Naegi's words were erroneous; can _hardly_ write a paragraph with no mistakes should more accurately be can _not under any circumstances_ write a paragraph with no mistakes. "According to this, you have a daughter in high school?"

"I meant sister." Forehead meets oak. To his bank of tidbits about him, Togami adds this one. "I told you, I'm _awful_ at this."

He hands back the pages to their disgruntled owner. "Have you ever considered tutoring?"

Those eyes, those sickeningly saccharine hazel heart-melters he's come to know over the past month, lift to peer at him then, and Togami- Togami seethes.

" _Hell_ no," he says instantly, because he can read him like a book, read him like he can English (which is rather well, especially in comparison to the other's comprehension). "I have enough to deal with. I don't have time to be your personal professor, as well."

Naegi deflates into dolor. "Okay, okay." He runs fingers through his fluff of bangs, breathing out uncertainty. "Don't know who else to ask, though. Kuwata wouldn't be any help- he's only here on a baseball scholarship."

"That... _friend,_ you're always prattling on about. Could she be of assistance?" Togami bristles at his own speech. Mentions of this companion of his leave the taste of rot behind his tongue, whether they be delivered or caught by hearing. And he wouldn't, in all honesty, like to figure out why.

A perk. The tapping of his pencil pauses. "Kirigiri? I mean... _maybe._ I don't think she'd be very good at that. She's more the type to say something once, and if you don't understand, then too bad for you."

"And you think me any better?" he coughs, almost _bemused_.

The conversations surrounding them dribble to dead with the appearance of their instructor, this time thirteen and one half minutes past the bell. Beside him, the papers tuck away into the back of his notebook, which opens to his expanding section of arithmetic notes. Togami doesn't expect the answer that wisps next between them, thinks it a done discussion with himself the triumphant owner of last word. No such deed.

"Well," is the true finality, "I think you're both really great. I try not to play favorites among my friends."

And that exchange is what's written on the empty line of his asylum indoctrination forms, under the question, _what the fuck happened?_

He thinks, at least, that his parents would be proud of him for once. They'd always encouraged him throughout elementary and middle school to make some friends.

Apparently, now, he has one.

And that is simply no good.

Togami has no time for _friends._ He's a busy, busy, busy man, as evidenced by his current state of furious typing up the beginnings of a Physics report in the burrow hole of his bedroom. The second hand on the far wall's analog stabs into his eardrums aside the pulsation of his throat. He has no time for _hanging out_ and doing whatever it is young adults choose to do together in their spare time. Again- he curses himself. Not _together_ in the sense of- honestly, just forget it; he's exhausted to the point of searing eyes and cramped hands, and his bones all rally protest when he swivels to take the time of day. It's evening, late enough to count dinner a lost cause, though not so much so as to be able to curl beneath his covers and not be burnt a sinner for daylight.

Togami has no time for anyone but himself, so he's quite tempted to just ignore the tender raps that sound on the latter half of his door.

Hands go to his hairline, elbows heavy to desk and lids heavy shut. The slightest twitch to the blonde above one sells out his chagrin.

"Hey." And who else would it be? That same brow moves in a quiver. He contemplates the repercussions of slamming the door in his _friend's_ face. But, he has at least the decency to hear him out, to gain the meaning behind that kicked puppy's expression aimed up toward him. His own spits blatantly, _what is it?_

Naegi shrugs the sides of his blazer inward with a raise of his shoulders. "You left pretty quick after Calculus. Is something...wrong?"

 _Everything_ is wrong, wrong, wrong, wr- "No."

"Oh." He relaxes into a nod. "That's...good. Cool."

Then it's _awkward_ , because, okay, he's said what he'd come to, and gotten an answer, and there's no real reason for them to still be placed adjacent across the open door, with Togami's hand loose on the knob, and Naegi's pockets stuffed with his own. And his eyes- they refuse to lock with the ones searing bored against him. And it's awkward, and it's boring, and Togami's closing of the wood barricade halts with a startled shout to _wait!_

He obeys with a pause, leaving Naegi to brim the quiet in opportunity. The pink dusting his face draws Togami's guts into a foreboding twist.

"There's, uh...there's something I want to ask."

Anxiety burns his lungs. This time, he permits the words rather than mere body language. "...What is it?"

Breath leaves him in one huff, heat scalding his neck and face and all over. His fists clench tight at either hip. He finds it a mortal's slicing to speak, razors dragging up his trachea and citrus the solvent. And, damn, _damn-_ how the hell's he to do this, with Togami staring at him so keen, clearly- _so_ clearly -unenthralled, and good _God_ , how do people _ever_ do this sort of thing? And-

"Do you know what a ra...rager is?"

Of all Togami's expectations, Naegi's never met a single one. Perhaps that's what keeps him coming back. But- a _rager._ And the question surrounding it, more precisely. Does he know what it is- _psh,_ of course! Togami Byakuya knows everything, knows all, knows each and every little thing, significant or otherwise. So he nods, and carries along in his facade of knowledge. Through the further, fumbling details thrown his way, he's able to check off that, yes, he _does_ (now) know what a _rager_ is, and it sounds fucking _horrendous._ This particular one's exactly two weeks from their current night, which pleases Togami's obsessively specific little heart, but aside from that, _nothing_ about this event seems appealing, and he's not sure in the slightest why Naegi's wasting his precious, precious time describing it. Apparently, it's in the dorm of a sophomore girl Naegi just blearily knows, apparently it's to commemorate Halloween, apparently invitations are given out to anyone with a pulse. Then Togami understands the point of it all, of why he's being blabbered to about Naegi's roommate's girlfriend's friend's friend's party, that's fourteen days post this one.

"No."

All his nervous energy leaves in smoke signals that now spell out disappointment. "I didn't even ask you yet!"

"I'm sick," Togami counters; he doesn't throw in the accessory of a forced cough, because Togami does not ever give evidence to prove the things he lilts. Doesn't require it. If people don't believe him by word alone, then they're welcome to enjoy a spot in the deepest pit of hell, as far as he's concerned.

Naegi does believe him, because he's a trusting little fool. "If you're sick now, then you'll be over it by the time of the party, right?"

"Naegi." Togami sighs himself into a lean against the doorframe. "Do I look like the type of person who likes to _party?_ "

His hand lifts to press into his forehead, and he huffs a pathetic sort of laugh. The hallway bleeds dark behind him. "I know, I know. I'm not either. But Kuwata asked me to go, and I figure, if I'm gonna be there, I might as well invite someone who'll actually make it _enjoyable_ for me."

Add that beneath the _what_ else _the fuck happened?_ area. Togami inhales a sharp beat. He feels his response exposes more vulnerability than is desired, though, likewise, is drawn inevitable by all that been presented to him so suddenly. "...Fine."

For the briefest of seconds, Naegi's eyes shout _whoa, for real?,_ but change in a blink to delight. "Cool," he says again, less so gauche as is it now sweet vim. "Feel free to invite whoever else you want, by the way. I'll text you the address and stuff later- oh, wait," Another _blink-blink_ of lashes full and delicate. "I don't have your number, do I?"

And with good reason; he hopes his glower is scathing. "Give me your phone."

Everything, all, each and every little thing. Togami knows it all. Knows his number by heart, as he's entering it into a new contact in this stranger-acquaintance-friend's phone, knows that there's got to be a myriad of other people that could have been the plus one besides him. What stumps him, though, is why this exchange of contact information was ever necessary, since they meet in the middle of their shared hall on the night of the _rager_ anyway, and it'd just be _stupid_ to walk separately. Togami's eyes shift down his chosen attire- thankfully not some ridiculous getup so common of this 'holiday'. Dark and slim from head to toe. Classy. He himself had allowed less than his usual pristine tailored appearance, because that's what people _do_ for parties, as he's seen telecasted. And because the cotton of his long sleeved polo is a relief from his usual pristine tailored appearance, and it looks nice paired with his pressed slacks and tight toed dress shoes, and he's a bit more than a bit discontented at the lack of fawning accolades thrown his way. But, fuck it. He doesn't live his life just to impress this nobody.

"I like that shirt," Naegi says as they're exiting into the harrowing purple of the night's atmosphere. Togami feels he's liable for combustion at any given moment. Instead, he clears his throat into a curled fist, taking stride down the wind of a brick pathway that splits the sides of the campus.

"Where's...the other one?" His tone is thick and haughty. The amount of meetings he's had with _the other one_ are able to be tallied on one hand, and he still has no idea where that ugly little _so you're the-!_ had been leading. He brushes harshly the flaxen strands blown astray by the nighttime wind.

"Kuwata left earlier," Naegi explains. "Probably to help set up, or something. Or to get laid."

He snorts with a signature roll of eyes. "And they say chivalry is dead."

The walk is longer than he remembers it ever being. Though, he supposes he's not a frequent of it, no where near as frequent as the one aside him. Naegi's quite the personable young man, Togami's long since noticed. He's always going on about the people he meets and the conversations they hold. To say he's resentless toward it- eh, it'd be pretty accurate. Togami hasn't a yearn for companionship at all. The self-assessment as to why, then, had he agreed to attend tonight, and why, then, did he spend over an hour preening himself for Naegi's acuity, and why, then- are all repressed deep down. He lets his elbows relax with hands into pockets. The lamps lining the path glow hot above them. Asinine decorations billow at every turn. He's tempted to snatch the next streamer ghoul he sees into a crushing fist.

"Here," directs Naegi, once they're just outside the apparent place. Which, Togami could've figured out on his own, blindfolded and spun in twenty circles, because the boom of techno music is audible from the front lobby. It reminds him of his initial encounter with the one who'd dragged him here in the first place. A notch of what he can only call nostalgia pins him momentarily in place.

"Togami," breaks him out of it. He turns to Naegi, first step under a sole. "Coming up?"

Leaving the door (or _doors,_ for it seems every one of this floor is swung ajar) unlocked can for once be called a smart decision. Considering the constant swarm of entering guests, it'd zap up the host's entire time to play doorman all night. The host- whom Togami still hasn't the blurriest concept of. But that's least on his mind, at the moment, instead focused on the latent ring of _everything_ around him. He notices that the female dorms are monsters in comparison to the ones in his own wing. The hall of this floor splits into four different bedrooms, and at the end, an enormous kitchenette and door to the communal washroom. The rooms themselves are larger, too, though it may be only for the fact that the one he first steps into is opened up by the trading of dual beds for bunk. Still, he can't be sure of the true size of anything, on account of all the sweaty bodies crammed into the space. It's similar to his conjectures in the sense that the gathering is packed to the brim with faces familiar and, mostly, otherwise. And the red Solo cups. Of which, he assumes, are all sloshing with liquor. He hasn't the time to decide whether to partake in this dogma of intoxicating oneself; someone's slapping a hand to his back and a cup into his hand, just barely grasping it before it makes a mess of the carpet.

"Oh, look who's here!" The drink-ditcher proclaims above the bass. " _Now_ it's a party!"

Togami, steadied again from the lurch of form, glares toward them. This face befalls directly betwixt the categories of _familiar_ and _otherwise_. It takes him a moment, a long, terse moment, before he trades his confusion in for aversion. "Oh... _you."_

Naegi blinks up toward them both, and half-smiles. "Hi, Hagakure."

Two simple words bring forth a hurricane of reaction; from the greeted, a vast beam of gleaming teeth, and a bleating, "Naegichi! Didn't see you there, buddy!" And, lest be forgotten, the third of the group gawks. "You _know_ him?"

"'Course I do. Naegichi's my brother!" Hagakure, mistaking the question as his own gift, shrugs an arm over the little one's stiff shoulder, dragging him toward that huge kitchen area with the promise of fixing him a drink.

And then Togami's alone at this stupid fucking party. Not even ten minutes in, and he's alone, and he may as well just screw off and go back to his own room. Not before he's tried his drink, though. From taste alone, he presumes it's some sort of concoction of cheap booze and a tint of soda. From taste alone, it's the most abhorrent thing to ever enter his system. But- hell, he downs it in a pull and clenches his face into a sour pucker. At least now he's an excuse to make his way toward the kitchen.

He never makes it. Instead, he's halted halfway by his second's return, still tucked beneath the hold of their boisterous mutual acquaintance.

"-and then I said- Oh, here's Togachi," he announces with his natural bear cub grin. "You need a refill?"

Before he has a response, Hagakure's dumping his own cup into Togami's emptied one, dousing his hand along the way. Togami's growl goes muted by the overall ambiance of tunes and chatter.

"I'm gonna go try and find Leochi." Hagakure shakes Naegi by a shoulder, as if it's a kind of newfound cool guy handshake. "I'll catch you two on the flip."

He nudges his captive forward, pushes his way back through the crowd in the direction he'd come from. Naegi catches himself just before he's to crash into Togami, who, in all candor, wouldn't mind so very much.

He blames it on the alcohol.

"Your... _brother,_ hm?" Togami reiterates. He watches Naegi's lips twitch around the plastic rim.

" _Hah-_ yeah. Hagakure's a good guy." Another sip. "We really only hang out when Kuwata and I need we-"

His abrupt cease of mouth hooks wire through Togami's surprise. "Need what?"

Naegi's sheepish by default, though cranks the aura up louder than the music at his own apparent misstep of voice.

"When we need to...when we need to drive places. He has a car. It's pretty lit." Heat mars the nape of his neck. Togami fixes him with one eye squinted in questioning, and Naegi swallows an impressive pull of _punch._ "How do you know him?"

"An unfortunate roster arrangement." Dubious as ever, he decides upon trusting that what's been poured into his cup is safe for consumption. Then he's a sputtering mess, and if one more person greets him by a hit to the back, he swears he'll return it tenfold.

"Quit usin' so many big words, man! You really think Naegs' stupid ass can understand you?"

"Thanks, Kuwata," Naegi says in a grumble.

Kuwata _grins_. "Just helping you out." He, too- because, why wouldn't he? -has a palm full of plastic, and sips idly at it, before unleashing an echoey noise into the cup. "Hey, hey, hey-! C'mere, baby."

Said _baby_ halts mid sprint, catching a gleam in her face and bounding over to meet the call.

"There he is!" she shrills, perching on one leg to toss her arms around his neck. They're too enthralled with one another to see the twin sneers behind them.

"There _she_ is." Kuwata kisses her neck in a way that makes her squeal, then settles for a loose hold round her size zero waist. He gestures vaguely around the group with his cup. "You remember Naegi, right?"

"How could Ibuki forget!" They exchange a cutesy smile-wave combo, and then she turns her attention to the unnamed other. "And whom's this tall drink of water, hm?"

Togami, already, does not care very much for her. From her speech pattern, to her gaudy tri-tone hair, to the way she peeks so closely at him, all boundaries erased.

"This is Togami," Naegi introduces for him, as if he has any right to. "He lives across the hall from us."

"Welcome to Ibuki's super special major rager, my friend. _"_ The hand she extends for a shake is covered by some weird sock-esque glove _thing_ that Togami is most certainly not going to touch. He chooses instead to shift around the sudden gush of people shoving behind him. When he flicks his gaze back to her, that hand's running sultry over the clavicle of her man candy. He nips the flesh below her line of earrings, whispers something taboo inside it. She wiggles her skirt this and that, and goes to drag him away by the wrist. "Oh-! Right, right!" To each the others, she peers sternly. "If you see my RA, then Ibuki has _nothing_ to do with this party, got it?"

Naegi's solid nod is answer enough for both of them, so Mioda goes along her merry way with an overly giddy Kuwata in tow.

"You didn't say this was his _girlfriend's_ party," Togami murmurs once they've gone, and Naegi's mouth mocks a plateau.

"It's not."

If there could be silence, it'd eat them alive. There's a group of partygoers forced out of a room to the back corner, and the door snaps behind their disgruntled forms. Naegi's never been the greatest conversationalist, though he finds his stance and says to him, "Want to go to the kitchen? I think it'll be quieter over there."

Even if he had a real choice, he'd still check _yes_. They weave through bushels of idle swaying. It's a lengthy jaunt, but they make it in each one piece, and Naegi's theory is proven true; Togami can finally hear something other than the endless shriek of Metallica behind curtains of hoots and hollers. There's still those lingering among the area, mostly for rationale of being close to the source of their tipsy glory.

Two bar stools at the center island capture them. Togami counts the thrums of Naegi's fingertips against the countertop.

He has the thoughts in his head and the words on his tongue, but he plugs his mouth with again the rim of his cup. Because, while he's got the thoughts, the words, the everything else, he isn't sure _what_ they are, and hasn't the audacity to find out by trial and error alone. A Togami should be free from fault, eloquent in every endeavor. Working toward it's nowhere near well enough. So, he thinks a mild minute, thinks until the cogs in his head rust against one another, and with a flip-switch moment of absolute genius, he decides upon just the topic. He's sure he's not _that_ drunk, that he should hear another's voice when he parts his lips, but even still, he swears he's just gone to talk, and swears it is instead Naegi that does.

"Tsumiki, who's the RA of this floor?"

Togami wonders why the actual hell he's calling him whatever he'd called him, then realizes, like a damn fool, that there's another stool occupied on Naegi's opposite side. The one atop it, a full figured, choppy haired girl he's never seen, blinks back at him. Her voice is as mousy as her appearance. He catches her shaky reply of another name he does not recognize (Koi-something) and lets his mind drift off. He wonders why she's wrapped in so much gauze. He wonders how blind her hairdresser must be. And he wonders, after listening further to the conversation he's not been welcomed into, why it is that someone so subtle as this Tsumiki can possibly be roommates with that Mioda maniac he'd met earlier. Supposedly, opposites are meant to attract. It's proven by science, though not so with personalities. Regardless, if the case is as so, Togami believes he'll end up with someone plain and average, someone to contrast the perfection of himself. Someone short, with messy hair and lagging grades, with an affinity for boring movies and the slightest gap between his front teeth that Togami had noticed that one time they were sitting across from each other in the library studying for their upcoming math exam, but it only made him seem more endearing, really. Someone who lives across the hall from him.

Togami decides he's had enough liquor for one night.

The base of his cup clinking to the counter draws Naegi's glance, and he verbally scolds himself. "Oh, sorry- Tsumiki, this is Togami."

"Togami?" falls from her. "Like- Like Togami from across the hall?"

"I didn't realize I was so renowned." She stiffens at his scorn, and tucks hair behind an ear.

"Ah-! no, no. You're not. It's just that, Naegi tells me so much about-"

"Tsumiki's in my Trig class," said boy cuts in. His mouth quivers into anxious humor. "Makes me feel pretty smart, being in the same class as a sophomore."

"...Right." Then he's a next point to make, when again his voice is thieved in place of something more pressing. There's a far off slam, and a wave of hoorahs, and the reason for it comes barreling down the hall at the speed of space. They're forced to part ways to either side when the ruckus enters their vicinity.

Hagakure clears the counter in a sweep of an arm, cups and ice flying every which way to be replaced by the weight over his shoulder, and Togami didn't think it was still even possible to get one's hands on a keg. But, here it is, clear as day, and there's a sudden flock surrounding it. He finds himself pondering as to what's inside, and does not realize he's asked so aloud until the bear cub turns to him and shouts, "Find out yourself! Who's up for a _keg stand?!"_

"Oh, absolutely not." He leaves them with a profile view, glare pointed to the wall, drawn back in a start by a holler not far off.

" _Do it!_ " Mioda's top is unbuttoned enough to expose her bra, he notices, and Kuwata's nowhere in sight, though he senses he reeks of sex just as much as she. But, what she looks like or smells like is not the matter to him; what _is,_ is the way she _sounds_ \- urging, coercing, cajoling. He can check _peer pressure_ off the list of cliche party things he's encountered so far. "Come on, come on! _To-ga-mi! To-ga-mi! To-ga-mi!"_

Humiliation's an awful shade for him to don. The crowd mimics her chanting, because she's the hostess, and it's only the polite thing to do. His face positively _burns_ beneath the shield of his fingers. In a farouche flash, he catches a familiar stare from the room's second side, sickeningly saccharine hazels that no longer bid him so ill.

"I'll do it."

It takes several beats, but the intonation finds an end, as the owners of the voices are all too focused on the elk approaching the lion's den, now, feet scuffling to take center stage. Hagakure slaps him on the shoulder.

"Alright, Naegichi!"

A whoop breaks out from Mioda, and it trails among each guest minus a singular. Togami's never been more... _baffled_.

At least the view of his bare middle is pleasing enough. His tee pools around his chest, and Hagakure's hands dwarf his ankles, and Togami can do nothing but observe the way his mouth takes to the tap without the slightest hint of hesitance. _Baffled_ perhaps is not the word. Perhaps he's... _awed._

Then he supposes, baffled works again, because he can't believe someone can still manage to look hot with streams of booze flowing up their face. Naegi's knuckles grow white around the handles.

The cheering simmers into encouraging hisses. Hagakure tips his head in a howl, out sounded by a yell beyond the crowd.

"Oh, fuck!" It's some nobody lingering by the stairwell. His eyes expand and hands cup around mouth. " _Hootie hoo!"_

Mioda coughs up a mouthful of liquor.

"Oookay, folks! Fun time's over! Hide all the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll!"

Togami's never heard the phrase uttered by that raggedy boy by the door, and has also never seen three hundred adolescents all rushing for exits at the same time. He glances away from the lithe girl squirming her way out an opened window to the direction where Naegi'd been just before, legs to the sky and head spinning, but he finds himself fretting over empty air. He spots the perpetrator of the game sprinting with a six pack of fruity coolers over one shoulder, breaking through the dispersing jumble. Naegi himself rests on the counter's opposite side, he finds, head lolled to one shoulder. Drool niggles the corner of his lip. Togami sneers, hefting him underneath the arms to rise on fawn's legs.

"Go, go, go!" Mioda ushers the exit to the stairwell like a conductor guiding an incoming flight. Togami drags Naegi past her, among the last out, spotting the way she scrambles to button her top and lace her tie as she joins the uproar.

They lose their compactness as the walkway expands before them, and Togami's still not quite sure what it is that's chased them out, until he notes the way the sea parts around Moses' current reincarnation of a devil of a scarlet bob no higher than his shoulder. Her freckles gleam like starshine below the flicking streetlamps.

"Mioda, so help me _God!_ " trails after her stamping steps. She vanishes into the building, though they're wise to lash steps further, back on home turf with no possible consequences.

Besides one; and it leans heavily into his side.

"Togami..." murmurs the inebriated little mess, "I think I'm drunk."

"No, really?" He drops him on a bench outside their dorm building, heaves a sigh when he falls into a lain position.

Naegi hiccups, swiping the gooey disaster area of his mouth off on a sleeve. "Did you ha-have fun? At the party?"

It's much colder than on their descent to the location. He pushes his glasses up his nose the smallest bit. "...It wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be."

The statement earns him a sleepy grin. "Goodie."

Quite possibly, it's the nearest he's come to admitting his own fault. Must be the liquor, must be the rosy veneer of post-party splendor. Obviously those back his next action of sitting on the bench as well, breathing a sigh and leaving hands to roam his shocks of perpetual bedhead.

"That feels..." Naegi blinks closed his eyes. Neither notice that the declaration never earns closure. Togami thinks it positively adorable the way he breathes out the most delicate chime of finality.

Everything is ruined in the- literal -blink of an eye.

"Pumpkin," Naegi mumbles upon reclaiming sight for the shortest second. The other refrains for responding with _yes?_ and wishes to kick himself for even thinking it. "Pumpkin."

"What about it?" An index extends to train forward; Togami orders his vision to follow, and, lo and behold, a gourd carved to sneer menacing at them stares back.

"It's Halloween," he says. "Candy."

"You can't possibly be serious."

Possibly, he's serious. Very possibly. It's proven by his sudden leap into standing, and repetition of the single word. Togami stumbles to follow after his flee toward their most recent residence.

"It's nearly midnight, Naegi," informs Togami, like drunk people have any reason to care about time. His fist balls up into a pound, once they're inside a separate dorm from the one they'd just visited, and leaves vibrations through a door.

" _Kiiirigiri_ ," is his croon. "Girikiri."

He's still laughing to himself when she answers, dressed down to her nightwear, expression a crossbreed of vexation and reticence. It does not go without mentioning to himself that this is the first time he's actually _met_ this girl he's already heard so much regarding.

She looks him up and down once, and says, like it's just regular dinner conversation, "How was Mioda's party?"

"Freakin' _great."_ Fingers place themselves into a semblance of a rocker's symbol. "Also- hey, um...trick or treat!"

"I have mints," is the best she can offer. Mints sound like the best thing in the world to him, and he accepts the handful with the gratitude of a castaway taking water. "I'd invite you inside, but Asahina's already asleep."

"That's okay," he says around a shocking cheekful of peppermint. "Thanks for the...the candy."

"Of course. Goodnight, Naegi."

"'Night..!" He staggers backward, then darts for the staircase. Togami goes to follow, caught back by a practiced tone.

"I trust you'll keep him out of harm's way."

Whether it poses a question or not is unclear. He hangs back, studying her a long moment, reading past the heat in her analyzing irises. No response meets her. Something about her- Togami finds it _nettling_. He straightens his collar, then he's gone, down a story and between the flecks of breeze again.

Naegi's spitting mints into a steel trashcan when he locates him.

"These suck." He wipes his chin. "I want real candy."

"You're twenty years old."

A pout sags his lips. "Yeah, so, whatever. I'm an adult who happens to deserve some high end chocolate."

"I'll buy you your weight in Lindor if you stop acting like an idiot." The promise is futile. Stamps lash the concrete until they've trailed off campus entirely, and Naegi's only glanced one way before crossing the road, which Togami swears at and rushes briskly to be beside him. Getting himself run down does not fit the description of _out of harm's way_ in the slightest.

As reluctant as he so swings, Togami accompanies him to the porch of the nearest home. They're refused upwards of double digits before he presses the bell to a sweet old woman's house, and he doesn't even have to try to tell her he's sixteen, or that his costume is metaphorical, before she's holding a bowl outwards and making his eyes bug from his skull in excitement.

"Are you happy now?" Togami asks as they take the desolate streetway.

Hersey melts against the roof of Naegi's mouth. "Yeah, probably."

Silence is their shared scarf. Save for their steps, and the crinkling of wrappers, it's rather well-knit. Naegi, to his subtle surprise, has no chatter on their stroll, only chews. It suits Togami finely. They make it back to the frigidity of the bench in the same second Naegi decides his legs have had enough, and he collapses heavily into it. He licks the pads of his fingers. Togami's sigh is thick as he plunks into the second half of the seat.

"Togami," he says, because, the bearer guesses, that he just likes to say it. "Tooogami."

"What?" presses into his palm.

Naegi laughs."How come you don't have a roommate?"

"Because." Nearly, he leaves it, though then chooses a proper reply. "I don't need one."

"Don't _need_ one, or don't _want_ one?"

He frowns. "Both."

Contrasting him as per usual, the other's expression is a flush of contentment. "We should be roommates."

" _No_." Does he ever answer to things otherwise? "...You already have one."

"Meh." The back of his neck rests to the back of the bench. "I don't think Kuwata would mind. He's always having girls over. Makes me feel...lonely."

Togami wants to ask how the presence of _more_ people can affect him in such a way to long for them, but never has the chance, and if he had to describe Naegi's breath, he'd say that it smells of beer and chocolate. Which, distinct under normal circumstances, are unmistakable when less than two inches away.

"Togami." There it is again, and, _God_ \- it's like this kid trying to bring cease to his heart. It's nighttime, it's Halloween. Leaves scuttle across the pavement. His legs remain in their crossed pose of tension. "...Can I kiss you?"

And then, because he never answers to things otherwise, Togami says, "No."

"Oh..." Beer and chocolate. Wisps of it. The odor calms when his lips, previously longing, snap closed. He returns to his straight-spined position, hands clamped to kneecaps.

There's a twinge to Togami's insides that play for him a song of penitence. It'd be so simple to reach out and claim his lips, to mark up his skin and bleed into his very core. So, so complicatedly simple.

There's a twinge to Naegi's insides, too. And then there's beer and chocolate splattered all over the grass behind them.

He clutches the pole aside him, bent at the waist and hurling gallons of Budweiser. It was bound to happen, really. There's just no plausible way a human stomach can hold as much as he'd intaken during his gravity-defying travail. The startling burst of mint and rich, melty dessert probably hadn't helped either. Togami palms his eyes.

And of course, the door to Naegi's room is locked, and of course, there's no key in his jeans. If he were Togami Byakuya of early September, he'd leave him to sleep it off on the hallway's dingy carpet. But, he's not, he's late October, possibly very early November depending on the exact time Togami Byakuya, so he clears the boxes from his second bed and tosses his patient in their place.

"Hey, Togami..." mumbles out as the namesake is fussing to tuck the blankets around him. "It's kinda like...we're roommates, for the night." Giggles follow in slurred tone.

"I won't hesitate to throw you back out on the street." Yes, he most definitely would hesitate, but threats that hold truth always prove ineffective.

The energy he has is sapped up by untying laces and undoing his belt, and that's as comfortable as he's comfortable getting in the presence of another. By the time he's got his comforter wrapped over him, there already rings the discordance of shallow snoring breaths from the room's second side. He does not waste his own in tossing a _goodnight_ as he'd semi-planned.

As far as he's concerned, this is an absolute one-time only deal. As far as he's concerned, his attendance to that _rager_ was a godawful mistake.


	3. Chapter 3

As far as he's concerned, eight thirty AM is rather late to awaken on a Saturday, and he's almost grateful to the frantic pounding on his bedroom door.

Almost.

His legs fold over the side of the mattress, rubbing knuckles into bleary eyes, and he never knew it possible for a locked latch to be literally kicked open. So much for a safe and secure living environment.

"Togami." It's _the other one_ , blazing frenetic air. "Where's Naegi?"

Of the questions that surface- _what are you doing in here? where are your shoes? why am I suddenly that boy's designated keeper?_ -none of them spill, instead motioning a dragging point to the twisted hurricane of sheets and jutting limbs. Kuwata bounds toward it.

"Naegi, naegi!" He grasps the ankle hung off the bed and tugs. "Bro, you gotta get up. They're doing room checks."

"Room checks?" slips behind him. Frenzied sky blues aim at him.

"Yah. Apparently word got around about the party last night, so all the RAs are pretty pissed off." The shaking of Naegi's leg increases enough to drag him with a thud off the bed. From his crumpled position on the ground, he groans lowly, and the fall would hurt even _without_ the throbbing hangover.

"Naegi, get your ass up!" Kuwata barks, dragging him up by the collar of his tee. "Eyebrows is gonna be here in ten minutes. We gotta hide some shit."

"Wait...what?" Into the flitting morning light, he squints, falling into a stagger once he's dropped. A hand steadies him on the corner of the desk. "Room checks this early? How'd'ya know?"

"'Cause, I was still in Maizono's bed when that Koizumi bitch came poundin' on the door." He shoves the one to their room open with flourish. "I had to climb out the freakin' window!"

Trailing them without invitation, Togami scoffs and adjusts his lenses.

"Alright, well..." Naegi places a palm to his undoubtedly aching skull. "Let's just...figure it out."

His sigh is harsh, and Togami guesses he'd probably like to be able to be awake for more than thirty seconds without being dragged into such an escapade. And he's got the faintest dash of sympathy for him. Until Kuwata emerges from rummaging beneath the thin canvas of his mattress.

Togami's eyes go wide. "Is that _marijuana?_ "

The plastic baggy tosses between them. Naegi, now the possessor of the paraphernalia, shoots a pleading look his way. "Please, Togami. Just...be cool, okay?"

_Cool_ has yet to ever be a personality trait of his. He breaks their stare to roll his, huffing resilience in two strokes of folding forearms.

The door to their mini fridge slams shut. Kuwata holds up a trio of vodka nips. "We gotta ditch these suckers, too."

In his free grasp, Naegi catches the bottle tossed his way with a whining groan. "The last thing I want right now is more alcohol."

"Don't be a bitch," instructs Kuwata, clicking the seal from his. "You too. Just-"

Inveigling is never required to the third; when he glances to him, Togami's head is tipped and his drink a pessimist's view. The two boys marvel at him, coughing into an elbow and shaking off the sharp taste once he downs the whole portion. He clinks the glass to the top of the fridge, folds his arms back into place and idles as if nothing's askew.

"Dude..." Kuwata breaks into a snorting cackle. "Damn, I shoulda partied with _you_ last night."

While he tips his own to guzzle the burn of straight vodka, Naegi frowns just slight enough to go noticed, and leaves the bag aside the empty bottle on his way past. "I'm gonna pour mine down the sink."

Togami's foot taps in impatient mantra. Really- his presence isn't _required_ , but it's...he likes to be included, perhaps. And, he likes the insider's peek at the room across the hall. All dorms start identically; bland beige walls, a bed of white sheets on either side, a closet at either end of each. From what he's collected of his sparse visits, they, for some strange odd-couple reason, share custody of a singular closet, and that, even still, there's more socks littering the rug than actual visible rug. It's much darker here, too, giving off some kind of _warm_ vibe, and on the long table between their beds (because they've evidently never heard of _nightstands_ ) a stereo sits dormant and a lava lamp bubbles deep vermillion. He's scanning over posters plastered about the beige, which for the majority are of American rock bands, and he cannot comprehend how Naegi can so often listen to these Iron Maiden and Green Day freaks and still not be able to form a coherent English sentence, when there's a gag beside him that fades into a hoot.

"Nothin' like a little hard liquor to get the mind working." A shiver pulses through Kuwata. He takes both emptied glasses and deposits them in the wastebin by his bed, burying them below the myriad of crumpled tissues that Togami truly does not ever wish to know the usage of. "I think we're in clear for that, so long as he don't smell our breaths."

Kuwata coughs a laugh into his elbow, drums palms against the thighs of his jeans in thought. Thought- of which he gains suddenly. "Oh, right." Togami shifts as he nears him to sneak two fingers into the top of the bag.

"Man, I dunno why this prick even cares so much about us havin' a little weed. Doesn't he know his boyfriend's the biggest pothead on campus?" Kuwata doesn't seem to mind the lack of reciprocation to his conversation. Out of the minor tidbits Togami knows of him, one is that he likes to _talk_. He likes to talk, likes to smoke, likes to stick his dick into anything with a miniskirt. Evidently, too, likes to poke his nose into business it belongs not. "Still can't believe those two like each other. I mean- c'mon -a yankii and a friggin' boy scout. That's almost as weird as- _heh-"_ The curve of his grin teases Togami's aggravation. "That's almost as weird as a plain old geek trying t'get with his pompous businessman neighbor."

The pale of his face makes way for even more. He's not sure if he's imagining things, but he's near certain he feels all the oxygen leave his body at once. "What?"

Kuwata's glee bursts from him more. "I'm glad you two finally hooked up last night. Don't get me wrong, I like the guy, but it's pretty boring listenin' to him go _on_ and _on_ 'bout how hot you are."

Togami's visage lacks all natural flush, contortion of expression highlighted by the indigo gleam of the lava lamp. "...What are you talking about?"

Then it's Kuwata's turn to pale. "Oh- I just assumed you guys... _y'know_ , since he slept at your place last night. And that was the whole point of bringin' you to that party, in the first place."

Taciturnity crochets his body into knots. Kuwata darts his eyes left right left, smile not so much mirthful as it is neurotic. "Uh...maybe I said too much?"

North becomes south and west is east, and the characters of the alphabet read backwards, and it snows in the summer and swelters in December, and three-two-one is counting up, and-

"I told some of the other guys about the room check," Naegi says from the door, thumb suggesting outward. "Seems like most of them are in the same position as us."

He's correct, if the loud exclamation from down the hall is any indication. Skidding to a stop outside their room, the source of it reads frantic lividity.

"The hell's this shit for?! I didn't even go to that party."

"Man, chill out, Oowada," Kuwata barks. "We're all in the same boat here-"

"Hey, Oowada!" comes from an opened doorway just behind them. "Why not tell your fuckin' boyfriend to go screw himself and stay outta our business?"

That's enough to catch his attention. And his fists. The perpetrator's disproving gravity in four seconds flat, back slammed to the drywall and cries pleading. Kuwata huffs, breaks into the hall to split them up.

"Where's that kid who, like, bombed his high school to delay the exams?" Hagakure scratches at his navel, yawning bold and wide. "We need him."

"I'm pretty sure that was just a myth," someone else pipes up.

The discussion crackles into a cataclysm. With each passing moment, another entryway brings forth more boys of crazed-eyes and lashing tongue, and there's certainly been jabs thrown here and there, because gathering twenty grown men and expecting them not squabble is of utmost inanity.

Above the bickering and throwing of useless ideas, a throat clears in several noisy, attention-seeking _m-mh!_ s. "Gentlemen, please," implores Kuwata once all eyes are on him. "There's only _one_ way to solve this."

"Toke all the pot and drink all the booze before Eyebrow Dude gets here?"

A scowl. "No, Hagakure. Not even close."

His socks drag toward the open arch leading to the bottom floor. Aside it, a fern crawls up the corner wall. Leaves part around his brushing fingertips. He allows himself a gracious bow, before he turns back to the protrusion on the wall, and tugs his hand in a single swift motion downward.

The building explodes in a cacophony of the shrieking alarm. Lights blink blinding saturated scarlet from the ceilings.

Congratulatory whoops and shouts bend around the commotion. Quadruple file, they flood out of the front lobby, guys from other floors and building joining into one enormous cluster on the grass outside. Apparently, word had gotten out of a _fire emergency_ as quickly as a real fire would spread, and the female dorms empty in tangents, too.

If Togami were capable of thoughts, he'd recall that very first encounter, again, where'd he foretold of preventing such an event. Now, in garish mortification, he realizes why their _incense_ had stunk so badly, but that's aside the point, and there's no room in his head for anymore bullshit at the moment. Kuwata had brimmed him with plenty by way of his slip of tongue.

He can hardly- no, he can _not_ -he cannot even look Naegi in the eye when he approaches him, smile wavering at the all-over ridiculousness of the meager day, though it fades to worry at Togami's strained expression. "Hey- you okay?"

He steals a darting glimpse at him, then covers his mouth in a hand and drops his eyes to the ground. All Togami can manage is a nod of his head, and prayers that this drill will end and allot him the divinity of concealing himself in his dorm until Monday morning.

Naegi cocks his expression into questioning, not in a tempered _what the fuck_ kind of way, but more of a nurturing _what the fuck._ It grinds his calcium to dust.

"Remain calm, everyone!" The clipboard in the RA's hand waves wildly above the clowder. "This will go smoothly with your cooperation!"

His rave to placate everyone is drowned out by their inattentiveness, and someone far off that shouts, _cooperate with this dick!_ and draws his authority in harsh barks.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

Once promised that the routine pass through will be postponed to several days post, they travel in a herd back up to their rooms. Togami, pockets holding hands, stalks swiftly at his side.

"Yes, Naegi." The name tastes foreign. "I don't see what this fuss is over."

He shrugs, taking the stairs. "You're acting kind of... _off_. Did I do something last night that upset you? 'Cause, really, I was wasted, I don't remember a thing."

Then Togami sears pink, because he _does_ remember a thing. A thing, a bolded, underlined, capital T thing. A **Thing** that hadn't seemed too weird at the time, since, yeah, Naegi truly _was_ wasted beyond capacity for sense, so asking to kiss a friend isn't so bad in that situation. Especially when that friend is a touch tipsy, too. Togami thanks whatever God made him spew that single _no_. Because, it wasn't weird at the time, but it most certainly is fucking weird now, now that he knows sober Naegi probably wants to swap spit with him just as badly as just-downed-like-six-gallons-of-beer Naegi had. And Togami, sober Togami and just-drank-two-Solo-cups-of-ginger-ale-and-Smirnoff Togami (and one nip of vodka Togami, though that Togami hardly differs from the former) alike, don't think they'd mind it very much, in fact may revel in it, and that makes every state of Togami weak at the knees.

"Nothing happened." The crowd moves around them to return to their respective residences. "Just, next time there's any sort of _rager_ , do not invite me."

"Oh..." And it draws forth the memory of his response last night, after the _no_ he's still praising heaven's saints for, and it draws forth a twitching. "Okay. Well...see you later."

_Joy_. Togami folds behind the click of his door. But if he could ever relax- well, he wouldn't truly be Togami Byakuya, then, would he?

He does not relax because he can not relax, because the second bed- he refuses to call it a _guest_ bed, as that would allude to him being inviting of _guests -_ is an absolute warzone, and his _guest_ hadn't even had the courtesy to fix it. He scowls, tucking satin to the corners of the mattress. First Naegi has to go and consider him a _friend_ , bad enough in itself, but to then decimate his peace of mind by developing stupid _feelings_ for him- it should be considered a felony, he thinks, smoothing the comforter atop it. His hand meets with something solid in the midst, and he begrudgingly undoes his handiwork to fish it out.

The phone is warm from having been slept on all night. Togami's interest pinches his morals tightly shut. A slide reveals he's wise enough for a passcode, though still dim enough to make it his birthdate, which Togami guesses on his first attempt. He detests the fact that the punching in of 0205 comes so naturally to him, but regardless, he's himself a whole world of Naegi Makoto within his palm. His throat tightens in anticipation while the message app loads up. He tuts at the fact that he'd the wit to clear them all out.

Disappointment at such a discovery is unlike him. He's never been a gossip, or an eavesdropper, or anything similar. He keeps to himself, and trusts others to keep their mouths shut about his personal business. Then, he realizes, that he's never been an eavesdropper, or a gossip, because he's never needed to be; he's never tangled himself up within such a mess of opinions and voices as he currently exists, and it's all due to the one single factor of Naegi's pathetic little dope of a heart. The button at the top of the device locks it. He bends down to collect the pair of shoes he stumbles into, and bundles them all together to deliver to their holder.

"How could you _do that?_ "

He's never been an eavesdropper, though he's always been told to try new things.

Outside the cracked door of the Kuwata-Naegi residence, Togami peeks round the corner, begging of his breath to fall silent.

Beyond the postered walls, the redheaded punk scratches at his jaw. "It kinda...slipped out? Don't worry, I don't think he really caught on."

Though Togami's angle casts him unseen, he can sense the way Naegi paces, a quirk of his brought on by distress, Togami's noticed. "How could he _not?_ Kuwata, do you realize how awkward you've just made, like, my whole life?"

"Alright, alright." Kuwata's hands splay in defense. Deep forest lighting illuminates his form. "But, you just said you tried to kiss him, anyway. He'd have to realize something more than just friendship was up after _that._ "

"No, no," insists further. "He thought I was drunk. And, I mean, I was pretty drunk, but not enough to not know what I was doing, for the most part."

To keep his grotto juxtaposition surreptitious, Togami forces his choked gasp back down his trachea.

"You were drunk enough to puke your guts up on the lawn," points out Kuwata, chortling at the thought. Naegi scoffs, perhaps in embarrassment, Togami guesses.

"Yeah, and I was drunk enough to go trick or treating, too, I guess." The distinguishable noise of patting his jeans sounds next. "My pockets are _full_ of wrappers. Look at th-"

The patting grows harsher. Kuwata asks the issue, and Togami pictures the wild glaze over Naegi's pupils.

"Where's my phone?"

Footsteps padding his way shove him to the far wall nearer to his room, mimicking the faux pas of having just exited.

"Did I leave it-? Oh!" Naegi pauses, the edge of his door in a hand. "Hi, Togami." No longer must he merely imagine the wild look; it's directly before him, aimed his way and attempting desperately to dissipate. "Hey, uh, have you seen my phone, by any chance?"

Wordlessly, he lifts it, injecting relief into him.

"Thanks." He accepts it gingerly, smile appreciative as ever, perking when he hears, "I suppose you'll need these eventually, as well?"

"Oh," he laughs, and likewise takes the sneakers. "Yeah, probably. Thanks. Again."

Togami nods as he turns away, but the hand on his doorknob hesitates in twisting, because Naegi's timid voice quivers around his name, which he answers by facing him again and lifting a brow.

Under the spotlight of attention, perspiration becomes his hairline's maid of honor. He swallows, thick and anxious, and whatever he should next spill could either make his, like, whole life ten thousand times worse, or the slightest fraction less stressful. Dice roll from his gambler's tongue.

"...What Kuwata said to you before," he fumbles, "just...forget it, okay?"

A terse moment lies between them. Togami hangs his eyes indolent, then moves to muss through his silks of blonde. "Ah, but I've myself an eidetic memory when it comes to you, Naegi Makoto."

Those indolent eyes of his turn to full moons, and he has no idea what in the fuck he's even just said, and Naegi's giving him a stare that's meant for someone bearing three heads, so before he can collapse in his own mortification, he darts into his dorm at lightspeed. The slam echoes through the entire floor.

He _really_ sucks at flirting.


	4. Chapter 4

_He really sucks at flirting._

Or- was it even so? Was it so, that he'd indeed hung himself to billow in the breeze of coquettish air? Whatever the case, he feels sick in every sense, feels stomach sick and heart sick and head sick, and there's no remedy for any of them.

And when he wakes up, a bright and beautiful sunrise of the week's last day, his cheek is melded to pillow case with saliva, and breathing through his nose is as simple as spinning straw into silver.

He decides that schoolwork will only make him feel worse, so he sets to completing a review packet for metaphysics. It does its job well- passes the time, makes him forget that his throat feels akin to having downed a pull of glass shards. Makes him forget, too, the fool he'd painted himself. Well- not completely. It returns to his memory in sporadic intervals throughout his several hours of tedium, each time bringing fever to his temples and choke to his tongue. Togami hopes he succumbs to this cold.

He's reminded ever so strongly of the incident when the second half of it finds his way just outside his parameters. He's able to ignore the first set of knocks, thinking he'll (and, he can tell it is _he_ , because there's no other who would pay him a visit at three PM on a Sunday afternoon) relent and slink away.

Relent, he does not.

"Togami?" passes muffled through the door. "I haven't seen you since yesterday... Are you sleeping? _Tooogami-_ "

"Just _come in_ ," he bites at last, slapping shut his computer to sit more poised against the metal headboard.

Naegi's nose peeks between the door and frame, and he smiles quietly forward. When he enters completely, it's by way of a knee pressing open the entry, as the navy green sleeves of his coat lead to hands filled with two cups steaming from the lids.

"I didn't really remember how you like your coffee," is his admission, setting the cup marked in the kanji for _black_ on his nightstand. He scooches Togami's legs from the edge to place himself there, drink leaving creamy froth on his upper lip as he sips it.

How he likes his coffee is impossible of him, as it entails nothing of that shoddy on-campus café, but he refrains from saying that. Refrains from saying anything, as the scorch of speech is something he'd like to avoid.

"You disappeared pretty quickly, yesterday." He licks the foam away. "Did something happen?"

_Yes, yes, yes! Is he an idiot?_ A gawk is withheld; he makes to deny it, chooses to then do so by way of head shake. Naegi raises a brow behind the rim of his caramel macchiato. "Are you feeling alright? You look a bit...well, you don't look _bad_ , just, kind of...are you sick?"

If he ever manages to complete a single thought without shooting off onto meandering pathways, Togami's head would probably implode in shock.

"I believe so, yes." Because why lie? He sniffs once. Naegi oozes sympathy.

"I hope it's not that fever that's going around the sophomore dorms. I hear Mioda caught it, which means Kuwata's probably going to, too." There's a sigh, that neither are sure the creator. Into a pocket, his hand dips, and produces a bundle of cellophane. "Hinata threw in a free cookie with our drinks. Do you want it?"

The low light glints off his glasses. At his side, his fingers twitch. Naegi's close enough to his legs to be nearly sitting atop them. Warmth manifests about the space.

"So, listen," Naegi says next, tapping a finger to his cup. He watches bits of crumbs rain from the sink of teeth into the confection. "I have something to ask you."

And it very nearly needs to be carved into Togami's headstone that he died from choking on a sugar cookie, because _I have something to ask you_ always means _get ready, I'm about to say something that's going to make you want to throw up._ But, then he recalls this particular interrogator's track record of asking the most _ridiculous_ things after such a build up, so his chewing returns tranquil again, and awaits whatever stupidity should spill from his lips.

"So, uh..." He squeezes his thighs together. His drink's lip is suddenly very interesting to his gaze. "Uh, well..."

Then Togami has a question, a question for whomever controls the fate of the universe, a question for whomever is on the other end, making Naegi's cell phone vibrate at his hip: _why?_

"...Hello?" he says, after leaving him with an apologetic glance. "Oh, hi, Kuwata." His eyes roll back. Togami finds it amusing.

There's an apparent questioning of his whereabouts ("I'm across the hall."), as well as a scuffle between desires. "No, I'm not going to ask him that. I already told you. Because- Kuwata, no, he's not going to say yes."

Naegi sports a frown, whilst Togami's face blares confusion and slight contempt.

"No, Kuwata, I'm serious. I-" It breaks off into a sigh, rough around the edges and through the center. "Fine." He lifts his cheek away from the call. "He wants to talk to you."

Togami wonders if _I have something to ask you_ is the same something as what Kuwata wishes of him to relay. He guesses, educated, that they do not coalesce. To his best ability, he tries to keep from breathing his virus onto the receiver as he groans, "What is it?"

" _Yo, Togami, my man,"_ stabs into his ear. " _It's Kuwata."_

"I'm aware," he drones. "What do you want?"

No time passes between the inquiry and beginning of reply. " _Listen, I really need your help. We got- Oh, y'know what? I'll just come over. Hang on a sec."_

"No, no, no, no, n-" he tries, but dialtone is the only one who hears it. His skull clunks to the wall. "He's coming over."

Naegi's smile is, again, of sorrow, pocketing timid his phone. "I'm-"

"Here!" The only thing louder than his greeting is the impact of door to wall. Cough- and, there's no way the knob hasn't just left a dent in the paint. Glower.

Kuwata takes in the cutesy drinks and cookie wrappers. "Oh, sorry. Am I interruptin' you ladies' tea party?"

Of the three, he's the only one who takes humor with it. He straightens himself, and Naegi looks more ill than the actual invalid, so he pauses in his gust of potential soliloquy. The falter catches Togami in the undertones of peculiarity.

"Wait a minute." A hand goes to his fiery locks. His peer focuses pinpoint to the room's one true resident. "You like sweet things? Shit- that'll make this so much easier!"

Togami wipes the icing from his bottom lip, though he thinks his skin hot enough to melt it off.

"Okay!" Kuwata claps once in a boom of thunder. "I'll be back in...I'm not sure how long, but don't move. I promise you'll like this."

"Kuwata-"

"I said don't move, Naegs, that includes you!"

Naegi falters from having attempted a dash toward him. He pleads with a flash of hazel. Kuwata feels nothing to it. He blows a kiss on his descent out. They listen to his jog down the corridor, and Togami listens to Naegi's dismay weaving through the atoms of the atmosphere.

"I don't...know what's exactly happening here," he tells him, steady and even, "But I'm assuming I'll want no part of it."

"...Yeah." Naegi drops himself to the bare bed on the room's opposing side. "You're probably right."

Despite the length of their acquaintance, their _friendship_ , there still exists that muddy hint of dripping maladroit. Previous encounters of crippling awkwardness, while they do not help much, can not be blamed entirely for it. It's just...it's _just._ It's just that Togami's sitting there, in all his mouth-breathing glory, unknown of whatever the fuck is apparently happening with he and his across-the-halls. And Naegi's sitting there, too, leg jittery against the bedpost, and Togami knows whatever this situation is, it's doing no good for Naegi's constant anxiety. And, whatever situation he'd intended it to be, before this one instead emerged, is more than likely still niggling his nervous energy to flow. Togami decides, as he wets his throat with shitty black coffee, to rid him of it.

"What were you going to ask me?"

He glances up from the rest of cheek to palm. "Eh...I think Kuwata wants to keep it a secret, now."

"Not that _."_ The nightstand takes again the cup. He folds his hands on his middle. "What _you_ were going to ask me. Not whatever inane inquiry _he_ has for me."

Where Togami had intended to ease his tension, he thinks he's unintentionally raised to bar, if Naegi's rose-dusted cheekbones tell any. "I...it's nothing. Don't worry about it."

"I'm not, though it appears you are."

Naegi has hardly a close friend whom _doesn't_ psychoanalyze him on a daily basis. "I'll tell you later...maybe. I don't know, it's nothing important."

They fade into quiet. Naegi's thumbs tap against his screen, recalling him of the day's prior _snooping_. Just what, Togami would die to know, must be kept under such tight wraps? He wonders (vainly) if whatever he'd erased pertains to himself. He wonders, he wonders, he wonders.

Not that he's counting, but Kuwata returns exactly twenty nine minutes after their conversation. Not that he's _excited,_ but his face does illuminate like a child's on Christmas, because, Kuwata had been right on the money in his illation that he _likes sweet things_ , and he just so happens to have a tray of gooey dark chocolate death-of-him in his hands.

"You like corners or middle?" A potholder separates the pan from burning into his desk top. Togami, long since removed from under the covers and taken a civil posture at the chair of the very same desk, blinks gradual waves of tentativeness.

"...Middle."

"That's my _boy!_ " Knife marks split the center, and Kuwata hadn't thought to bring napkins, so Togami's left with a brownie oozing its melty core into his bare palm. He's only _slightly_ perturbed, because, fuck it, it's a brownie, and brownies are _delicious;_ the first bite is decadence. Naegi hovers aside Kuwata with hesitance- no... _scolding?_ Scolding, in his face. But, it matters not. Togami's already scarfed the treat down, Kuwata halfway through his own with brows lifted a brassy measure.

The fall of teeth together through a chocolate square is Naegi's way of showing he concedes.

"Good, right?"

Togami shrugs. It's not _awful_ , though is sense of taste is impaired by the lack of scent. Really, Kuwata could've stirred dirt in with the mix, and he'd be none the wiser. Every so often, the tinges of hot sweetness burst through his blank slate of a palate. The shrug is a fair enough response, he thinks. One would be sufficient, so he's not sure why his shoulder both bob, seemingly on their own accord, a multitude of loose times, and he's not sure why Kuwata's trying so hard to stifle amusement at it.

Naegi smirks as well, Togami notes in disdain. Naegi smirks at him, because he himself is the bearer of an easy smile, as if all his tension had been wrung out through the shoulder shakes. From his seat, he glances between the two above him, and his mouth gains a longer curvature.

"Check out the happy bastard," Kuwata celebrates, wiping his hands together. "See, Naegi? Little weed never did anybody any harm."

"Little _what?"_ The happy bastard becomes the very _irate_ bastard in the flash of a second. "You drugged me?"

"Nah!" Though very apparently soaked in terror, Kuwata can't drop his beam. "Eh, maybe a little. But, listen, how else was we supposed to get rid of six grams of pot before the room checks tomorrow mornin'? You really think me and Naegi can smoke that much all by ourselves?"

"You drugged me." His palms cup either cheek. "You put marijuana in those brownies. I am currently high. You _drugged me_."

Naegi, gnawing a thumbnail, bursts suddenly in with, "I told him you'd never agree to smoking with us. This wasn't the plan, Togami, I swear."

"Hey, hey, don't go pinnin' this all on me just 'cause pretty boy's got his asshole in a knot." Kuwata peers cross toward the other. "Plus, s'not like I tied him up and forced him to eat it."

Naegi groans into his hands. "You're killing me."

"How'm I-?" He blinks, nudges Naegi with an elbow to look upwards.

Unknowingly, Togami gains both their wide gazes. They watch him in awe as he drags a handful of crumbly chocolate up to his mouth. An impressive handful, at that.

"Uh, Togami," Naegi starts. Beside him, the dam of Kuwata's composure threatens so near to crack. "I think that's...enough. You don't want to overdo it."

"There's drugs in these brownies," Togami says, cramming more past his lips. "These brownies have drugs in them."

"...Right." In one movement- and this one is surely hesitant -he reaches to claim the tray by the handles, pushes it to Kuwata's chest. "Get rid of these."

Kuwata guffaws, eyes pinching at the corners. "Sh-Sure. I'll bring 'em by Mioda's. Maybe it'll help her get over her cold."

The singular brownie hadn't the effect on Naegi to placate him; his displeasure rains blatant into Kuwata's descending form. He swivels his head back to Togami's ragdolled self, and he'd have to be blind not to realize that he's even more handsome than normal without his natural gloom.

"Naegi," he lilts, and the namesake blushes in the realization that he'd been staring.

"Yeah?"

Togami sniffs. Then sniffs again. Then again. Sniff. "I have something to ask you."

It draws a veil of unease about him, but regardless, he urges it out, taking a place in the second unoccupied desk chair.

Sniff. His eyes close. "Why do you two share a closet?"

"Me and Kuwata?" As if he'd mean any other. A finger touches to his chin. "'Cause, he uses his closet for his baseball stuff, and he needed another place for his clothes."

Togami hums, touching a foot to the floor to rock his rolling chair ever slight. "You're not very assertive, are you?"

His lips pucker to one side. "...Not really, no."

The nod of his head is an easy tempo. "That's no way to go about life. How are you to ever get what you want?"

"What do you mean?"

His lids part at that, popping off a look of irk. "I mean just exactly as I have spoken. How do you plan to get by in life, never getting what you desire, because you're too timid to ask for it?"

"Well..." A finger taps to his knee, which is precisely where his sight falls. Togami's too imposing a force to enter a match of stares, even with the chocolate on his mouth and mucus pooling in his upper lip. "I don't know. I don't really...care."

The volume of his sudden interjection startles Naegi to the core. " _Pah!_ Like hell you don't. Tell me, Naegi, what is it you want in life?"

"I want to...graduate? And, get a good job, I guess."

"And what else?"

Blinks trade between them. "Uh...I want to know why you're getting so philosophical. I mean, usually people get dumber when they're high, not the other way around."

"Listen to me," Togami interjects, scooting forward in his seat, forward enough to trip up the decency of personal space. The elbow of his shirt rubs across his mouth, and while it's less than appealing to watch, it's easier to take him seriously with his face cleaned. And he leans and he wipes and he says " _Listen to me,"_ and Naegi feels compelled to do so, especially when the hand plants to his shoulder. "What. Do. You. Want?"

And he knows just exactly what he wants, can claim hold of his desires- of which Togami's savvy, of course, just lives his life to toy with others'. He knows what he wants; he wants the pounding behind his ribcage to settle, as he's sure it's audible by now, with their proximity, and all, and- oh, their _proximity_ , and, _oh, oh,_ the hand on his shoulder, and the eyes on his, and the handcuff round his heart has no second end. And around his throat feels a ziptie, grating plastic against his skin, because Togami- _Togami, Togami, Togami! What the fuck is he doing?!_ And Naegi, just what is _he_ doing? He's- he's leaning forward, green eyes attenuated and lips soft and waiting, and Celsius strangles him worse than that ziptie does. Attenuated greens, they answer, so delicately, so fearful of the mines beneath the soil, they answer, _I want to kiss you,_ and the plush of Togami's parting mouth dares, _then do it._

"I totally forgot, she has a class on Sundays."

Naegi's skull clashes with the raised middle divider between the desk's two sides. He cradles it with a groaning.

The tray of lukewarm brownies sets between them. Kuwata narrows his eyes. "Am I, uh, interrupting something here?"

"No," says Togami, taking two attempts to cross one leg over the other. "Naegi and I were just talking."

"I see. And is, ah," his chin tips toward the blonde, "this one still soarin' and flyin' over here?"

Where Naegi takes a shrug, as it's all he can offer, the focus of the conversation scoffs. "I'm perfectly capable of answering for myself."

"Alright then," Kuwata chirps. "Ya still reelin' from the pound of chocolate ganja you scarfed down?"

His nose points up into egoism, then twitches. "No. I'm perfectly-" The twitch is caught into his fossa, snot and runny mucus ruining his sleeve. "-fine."

"Yeuck." Silver peeks in the midst of his protruding tongue. "Don't get your germs on me. I got a big game coming up soon."

He swipes his forearm across his face. "I cannot help whom my _germs_ should choose to infect."

At his next sneeze, Kuwata raises his arms in surrender. "Okay, I'm out. I can't be around your sick ass any longer. You coming, Naegi?"

"Oh, sure." His legs are weak when he stands, Togami can't help but notice, and the way he walks is a trifle stiff. "Bye, Togami. I'll check back up on you tomorrow."

He can't help but notice, notice, notice, that he's not been _asked_ if he'd like company, or a nurse, or whatever Naegi's attempting to fill the place of. _I'll check back up on you tomorrow;_ he fully intends on returning, no qualms with it. That's what... _friends_ do. Or, at least, that's what Togami thinks they do. He _doesn't_ think that friends are supposed to come centimeters from kissing one another, but, then again, he has no source material to provide comparison. So, really, maybe, getting a little gay is just what friends do every now and then. Maybe it's only when they're not their sober, robust selves, also; the only times they've come close to sealing a mutual pact of romance were with drugs or alcohol coursing in their bloodstreams. He wonders if he'll still like Naegi once he's revived from his high. He wonders how he'll know when that occurs. He wonders if it's already over, and all the mushy gushy thoughts he's having currently are unadulterated.

The only thing he wonders, next, is why the object of his contemplation is staring at him. "What?"

"N-" Naegi shakes his head. "Nothing. ...See you later."

The gentle grasp of his hands lifts pan; he turns to trail after his roommate.

Into the cushion about him, Togami's breath draws him further. His fingers tap against his abdomen. He sniffs once, stares into the near distance, and thinks he rather likes the mussed look of the recently sat-upon guest bed sheets.


	5. Chapter 5

"It's been a while, huh?"

Certainly. A long while of mutual recuperation. As promised, ensured, vowed, Naegi payed visit to the dorm across the hall with coffees and (undrugged) treats each and every worsening day of Togami's affliction. From its initial Sunday's dawn festering, the afternoons had dragged on with seemingly a new symptom each- fever, chills, coughing, what may there -until he'd felt the vigor enough to pull himself up and out the following Friday. And he'd been prepped to boast of his returning health, only to find the seat aside his empty throughout the entire period of breaking down mathematic formulas to their core. His instinct to inspect led to a wide open case of the inevitable; face smothered into his pillow and drippy with fluids, and Togami had sighed, and Togami had inquired as to what flavor scone he'd like from the campus café, and Togami had taken his fair turn as caretaker. Naegi's illness had, strangely, whisked itself away within a weekend, and the following Monday, eleven AM sharp, is the first class they've been mutually present to in over a full week's worth. So, yes, it has been a while, huh, and Togami's never been so glad to be poring over useless equations as he is this morning.

"You're sure you're well enough?"

Naegi waves him off, cheerful nature evident once more. "I'm fine, really. Plus, Maizono's getting pretty fed up with having Kuwata staying at her place."

"Was he truly _that_ afraid of catching it?"

A nod, a scrawl of pencil over worksheet. "His game is tonight. It's, like, the semi-final-play-off-decider thing." To the questioning quirk aimed at him, he says, "...All I know is, it's a pretty big deal. I'm not much of a sports guy."

Right, because he'd _definitely_ had to say that out right for Togami to catch on. He scribbles some arrangement of numeral toward the corner of his paper, moves to fill in an answer. "Either way, I'm glad you're well again. I don't have time to be your mother on top of all my course work."

Naegi smiles, and it's certainly not due to the calc problems he scans over.

"Speaking of my mother," he murmurs. "November break starts next weekend."

"And then final exams," Togami says, always planning farther ahead than ever required.

The tiny harrumph that sounds beside him is, admittedly, rather...cute. Naegi brushes past the topic. "Any plans over vacation?"

_Other than missing the noise across the hall,_ "Maybe I'll leave my dorm once or twice to eat or wash my hands, who knows."

"You're staying on campus?" Naegi's eyeing him suddenly. "Don't you want to see your family for the holiday?"

His pen's top pushes up his frames. The noise he produces is a hybrid sigh-groan. "Naegi, I'm the youngest of fifteen. Spending time alone _is_ my holiday."

" _Fifteen?"_ Starshine gleams in his eyes. "Jeez... I only have _one_ sibling, and sometimes _that's_ even too much for me to handle."

"You lack the patience I possess," is his theory, and it works wonders to draw out his laughter. They meet in tandem blinks of dual confusion.

"...Oh, you were serious?" Naegi blanches. "Uh, yeah. You're right. I guess I can get kind of short with people sometimes."

"In all senses of the word," he quips, then derides his silence in a breath. " _That one_ was a joke. Now is when you laugh."

Naegi's face skews into a jeer. "Sorry we can't all be titans like you."

His titan legs uncross below the desk. "I believe tall men are considered to be _hot_ , actually."

"Oh, you are, trust me." Ziptie. Handcuff. Silence. Past his shielding hand, Naegi reddens in a matter of seconds. "...What'd you get for number eight?"

Worms eat out the rotting flesh of their conversation. A conversation that, actually, hadn't seemed taxing on Togami's overall health. Each minute spent in the other's presence strengthens whatever _bond_ they've got between themselves. Togami'd feel less vulnerable strapped to railroad tracks.

But it's impossible to keep himself away from _him,_ because he's not just him- he's _him,_ and he's been _him_ for longer than Togami's been aware. As much as he'd like to spend more time apart, he'd _love_ to spend more time together. And he's a dash of devilry in the stew of his soul, and he's been holder of the spare key to The Room Across The Hall ever since he'd had to frequent it to play nurse just this past weekend, and he just _loathes_ the delicious way it twists the knob whilst both denizens are busied in their Trigonometry block.

The screaming starts sooner than he'd anticipated.

"The _fuck?!"_

Shadows circle through the shudders behind him, casting shade across the book in his lap. With each frenzied thump, his hand lifts higher to conceal the growth of his smirk.

" _Dude_ ," pierces his doorway, breathless and rageful.

From the current paragraphs he's paid no mind to, Togami glances up to the room's new occupant. "Something troubling you, Kuwata?"

Evidently so; "Where's Naegi?"

A page flips. He directs his attention back downward. "How should I know? You are the one whom just had a class with him."

"Alright," he concedes. "Well, if you see that little faggot, tell him I'm gonna bash his fuckin' skull in."

"Will do." Lithe fingers idle on the corner of another page. He waits until Kuwata's torn from the doorway to peel away his facade of indifference.

He doesn't get the chance to deliver the message. Togami resents ever feeling _excited_ for anything, but it'd be a slaughter to veracity to deny the giddiness that froths in the pit of his gut when he hears, a touch later than normal, the telltale scuffle of keys into knob. He looks up from his position at his desk chair with a book in his lap ( _again,_ not _still)_ just in time to catch Naegi tossing amiability over his shoulder. Togami waves a set of digits in return, and he vanishes behind his door.

The screaming starts right on time.

Though it's muffled now, he can still make out the distinction between pitches, the surprised yelps and incandescent backlash. There's a bang on the other side, which niggles Togami's worry. Further so, when it's thrown frantically inward, and Naegi tumbles into the hall flat on his back with Kuwata looming, revolvers of fury fully caulked. He whaps knuckles into the side of his face, all the while his victim's begging cease, pleading to know what's caused it.

And that is when Togami decides he's to intervene.

"What is going on out here?" Kuwata's collar catches beneath his grip. He tosses him up to a stagger, leaving Naegi the dizzy capability to flee. Despite how abhorrent the situation, he rather likes the way he chooses to cower behind him, as if he's his protector from all the world's evils.

"What's goin' on," Kuwata seethes, popping the joints of his neck into better alignment, "is that Naegi over here decided he could try and pull a fast one on Ol' Leapin' Leon."

"Coherently, this time," Togami mocks, chest a bass drum at the feel of little fingers gripping his sleeve.

He stamps a foot forward to widen his stance. "Could someone explain to me why there's _clothes_ in my closet?"

"I think you've just answered your own question; because it's a _closet_."

"No. No. No. We got a system around here. And 'cause _somebody-_ " His lurch forward makes the target flinch, though the shield treats him as no threat. "-messed with it, I couldn't find any of my shit, and couldn't go to the most important game of the season."

Togami lifts a hand in his direction. "I'm rather uneducated to this _system_ you mentioned. Why not show it to me?"

"It's all fucked up now, but..." They tread idly in his shadow. Their room is dark and warm and oddly damp, and they must have burnt the bulb in the overhead light, since the little capsule of lava is still bubbling rainbow in the corner. Kuwata shoves the front door aside to slide the closet's shuddered one. "Ya see-"

He gawks suddenly, mouth as round as the baseball that rolls across the floor and taps his toe.

"Well," Togami adjusts his collar. "It seems to me that your equipment's just as you left it. Remind me again exactly what Naegi did wrong?"

Hands fly up to part the mess of metal bats, kicking through mitts and balls as if digging for something underneath it all. "You gotta be screwin' me sideways here. Where'd it all go? This wasn't here earlier, I know it wasn't!"

He scrambles to toss open the twin door in the room's second half. Two bodies' worth of wardrobes spill from the shelves and hangers.

"No, no, _hell_ no!" Accusation pulls his finger to a lethal point at the one hidden behind the tallest. "You came back and switched it around, tryin' to make it seem like _I'm_ the crazy one!"

"You _are_ the crazy one!" Naegi bites harshly. "I didn't touch anything- I've been at Kirigiri's since Trig ended, you saw me go!"

"Since Trig ended." Scorn exits him in a breath. "But what about before that, huh?"

"Then how would I have had the time to come back and switch it all around again?!"

Kuwata pauses."Uh...it...it don't matter! You're still the only person besides me who coulda come in here! It was you! _You_ screwed me over and cost our team a spot in the playoffs! Admit it, admit it, admit it, admit it!"

Naegi's since broken away to stand on his own, and he faces Kuwata now with a confidence unknown to his mousy bones. "I didn't do anything, Kuwata! It was probably just a freakin' acid dream, or something. Chill out!"

He huffs his chest outward. "I don't have to take this shit! I'm going back to Maizono's."

"Oh, yes." His eyes roll and his tongue _tchs_ , and Togami thinks he's created an awful little clone of himself, with the stance of crossed arms and sarcasm Naegi takes on. "I'm sure she'll just _love_ that. Why not invite your six other girlfriends, too?"

"You- you- you-!" Rabid growls vibrate up Kuwata's throat. While he cannot triumph in a battle of comebacks, he _can_ reign superior in his physical prowess; he shoves Naegi toward the door, where Togami's since backed out of to assess the duel from the safety of the hall. "Okay, fine then. _You_ can be the one who leaves this time. Have fun, you little...little...y'know what, just fuck off!"

The poles supporting the building's core rattle with the slam that follows.

Togami never knew Naegi was an angry crier. He supposes he's never seen him in any state of emotion besides blissfully ignorant happy-go-lucky. The change of pace, though a tad gauche, as he's to act as though he _hasn't_ seen Naegi swiping his sleeve across his eyes, because that's the polite thing to do when people shed tears in public, the change of pace is welcome. Knowing Naegi Makoto beyond just what lay on the surface leaves a tingle in his fingertips.

" _What_ is the meaning of this commotion?!"

Now that- that's something he can gladly live without knowing.

Naegi looks up from his sleeve to the solid form advancing toward him, arms stiff to each side as he walks. He sniffs a bit, relaxes the tight scrunch of his brows to address the newcomer.

"Sorry, Ishimaru." He bows forward. "Kuwata and I got into...a small disagreement."

"Kuwata Leon?" his sharp tone clips. "He's already on my list. I'll have him expelled from the facilities-!"

"No, no!" Defensive waves work through frantic fingers. "It's okay, he didn't do anything wrong."

Togami sneers, but drops it at Naegi's continuation. "Actually, I'm glad you came. I have a question- how long would it take to officially switch dorm rooms?"

Ishimaru claims tight lipped thought. "It will take approximately one week for the forms to be signed off on. But, you, Naegi, are a good student. So I will allow you to stay in a different room for tonight without writing you up."

All the pressure evacuates his body, and goes instead to the one stiff at his side. Things are following accordingly to his planned thoughts, though he cannot stop the thick feeling of dread stroking the back of his mouth.

"Thank you, Ishimaru!" Naegi's palms press together into another tilt of appreciation.

"And if Kuwata Leon acts up again, do not hesitate to inform me."

"Of course," he nods. "Thanks, again."

Naegi bounces on his heels, turns the opposite way of the administrator's leave. When he catches sight of Togami's strained expression, his exuberance takes a backseat.

"...Oh, uh." Bottom lip slips beneath incisors. "Hey, Togami..? Could I..?"

His lungs deflate a puff of breath. To the carpeting, the sheen of perfect shoes take stride, not far ahead of those smaller, agile in their bounds. An arm extends through the open threshold, gesturing to the familiar space, and he hopes Naegi's not a happy crier, too.

And thus, Togami from across the hall, trades in his title to become Togami from across the room.

Across the room, Togami's never had a better night's rest.


	6. Chapter 6

Needless to say, he's nonplussed as all hell when he wakes up, facing inward on one side, and through the slits of the desk's low shelving, spots another form with his bleary vision.

Though they've had a _sleepover_ (how Naegi had jokingly described it in the days following it) once before, Togami's never witnessed him in a normal state of unconscious; not the twisted-sheet, halfway falling off the bed drunk Naegi, but actual, real and raw Naegi, curled like a kitten on his side, crooning quiet little asthmatic snores through his mouth. His eyes focus behind the pressing on of glasses. The three blurry forms compress into one clear one- very clear and very _cute_ , and Togami begins to regret this whole ordeal. But a Togami never, not once, not ever, settles for anything other than absolute recognizable perfection. Perfection to him, is the one sleeping in the bed to his left.

Morning sunlight sears still through the blinds, in three hours past his drop out of repose, when he's finished his minimal schedule for the particular day. He nudges the door open in courteous hush, since it's only nine-thirty, and he's correct in his assumption that his roommate- an odd word to use -has not yet woken. Blankets litter the floor, very corner slung over his jutting calf.

It occurs to him, at the sight of his coat and jeans (and bit of boxers that protrude between them- not that he was _looking_ , or anything), that all of his clothing is trapped beyond the realm of the enemy dragon. All his possessions, really, other than what'd been on his person. Togami guesses, utilizing his one hundred percent accuracy rate of clairvoyance, that his belongings consist of the clothes on his back, his room key, his wallet, and his cell phone. One hundred percent accuracy- it buzzes noisily against the hardwood of his side's table.

0205\. Togami shakes his head, drops his 0205- his _bag_ , settles himself in his rolling chair. The cover of a 0205 falls flat to the 0205, and he 0205s the 0205 in hopes to 0205.

He figures he's hellbound, already; go big or go home, at this point.

0205\. The screen unfurls into that same little world again. Tense held, he lingers a thumb over the messenger icon.

Empty- though, what'd he expect? The scowl of disappointment is conspicuously bright, and if it weren't for the sudden pop up at the screen's top, he'd've conceded to actually study this time.

There's a name, with text aside it; he clicks it, waiting as it carries him to a entirely different application, where his brain nearly erupts from the crest of his skull. What kind of person used a third party messenger? Apparently, a Naegi Makoto kind of person. It's heedless to drawl on it, particularly since he's now gained access to every conversation ever held by him in the past however many months, and it leaves him with a bizarre sheen of glee.

The first discussion he chooses to invade is of the one that'd guided him to his delight in the first place. Messages income more quickly than he can read. Time is not wasted in realizing that it's a group chat- a phenomenon Togami's only even known of through internet lore. This conversation bores him, considering six selections of _show earlier messages_ have still not granted him a single one sent by this device. A back arrow lights beneath his thumb. He selects a more enticing chat, one of a contact he very vaguely feels he's heard of before.

_(Tuesday, 2:12 AM) tsumiki: That sounds terrible but at least youre better off now right?_

Togami hadn't even known Naegi to still be awake at such an ungodly hour. As to their conversation, he's _lost_ , but hasn't the patience to scroll further back. He figures more reading will tie together the missing pieces.

_(Sent Tuesday, 2:14 AM): ik and youre right it totally is. i mean its kinda weird cause i think hes like onto me or smth idk  
_

_(Tuesday, 2:19 AM) tsumiki: What don t you know?_

_(Sent Tuesday, 2:20 AM): idkkkkkkkkk i just like. idk. its all really weird.  
_ _(Sent Tuesday, 2:20 AM): like imagine living with the person youve been trying to date since high school._

_(Tuesday, 2:21 AM) tsumiki: Well........._

_(Sent Tuesday, 2:24 AM): oh right lol. sorry._  
_(Sent Tuesday, 2:25 AM): at least you know miodas into girls tho so you have the advantage here  
_ _(Sent Tuesday, 2:29 AM): btw did you finish your slides for the trig project?_

_(Tuesday, 3:41 AM) tsumiki: aaaaaaaAAAAAA IM SSO SO SORRY NAEGI I FELL ASLEEPP  
_ _(Tuesday, 3:42 AM) tsumiki: Please please pl ease dont be mad im so sorry...,.......I'll talk to you soon! Sorry_

He figures he's already hellbound, and perhaps could end up there within a matter of seconds, if his heart continues to work as hard as is now. His fingers tremble, pupils pinpricks, though he's too engrossed by the thrilling terror of discovery to play saint.

_(Sent Monday, 12:12 PM): hey can i come ovet after my class ends_  
_(Sent Monday, 12:12 PM): over*  
_ _(Sent Monday, 12:12 PM): i have A LOT to talk about_

_(Monday, 1:08 PM) kirigiri: Ok._

If only they'd carried on their "A LOT" to talk about within the bounds of the chat room; Togami fears his glare hot enough to shatter the screen. The tedium of scrolling through each individual conversation would drive him to lunacy. He selects instead the contact that catches his eye most, the contact with anger in place of a true name.

_(Monday, 12:15 AM) FUCK YOU!: yeah that sounds pretty hilarious._

A flaxen brow perks.

_(Sent Monday, 12:16 AM): it...was honestly pretty funny tbh...  
_ _(Sent Monday, 12:18 AM): but like it seems like hes only into me if he drunk or high and like? that worries me_

_(Monday, 12:30 AM) FUCK YOU!: yeah idk  
_ _(Monday, 12:32 AM) FUCK YOU!: i'll spike his coffee next time he comes in_

_(Sent Monday, 12:33 AM): dont dude_  
_(Sent Monday, 12:33 AM): idk just like........uuugh  
_ _(Sent Monday, 12:41 AM): can you at least pretend to care_

_(Monday, 12:50 AM) FUCK YOU!: sorry  
_ _(Monday, 12:55 AM) FUCK YOU!: ok you were just typing for like five minutes and then stopped whats up with that_

_(Sent Monday, 12:56 AM): nvm._

_(Monday, 1:00 AM) FUCK YOU!: ...k_  
_(Monday, 1:01 AM) FUCK YOU!: i mean idk what you expect me to say_  
_(Monday, 1:01 AM) FUCK YOU!: people dont generally go to their ex for relationship advice  
_ _(Monday, 1:01 AM) FUCK YOU!: at 1 in the morning no less_

_(Sent Monday, 1:04 AM): youre right im sorry_  
_(Sent Monday, 1:07 AM): i hve to go to bed_  
_(Sent Monday, 1:07 AM): tsumiki deemed me well enough to go back to school tmrw. yay!  
_ _(Sent Monday, 1:08 AM): that was sarcasm i feel like dying_

_(Monday, 1:14 AM) FUCK YOU!: honestly same_

A car wreck. A house fire. A trashy daytime soap opera. Togami would compare the reading of his conversations to all the things humans are unable to look away from, no matter their inner horror. Mentally, he sums up every new point he's gained from it. For starters, like there was any uncertainty, Naegi Makoto most definitely has a desire to date Togami Byakuya, and has since... _high school?_ Togami's sure he'd recall if he'd met him in a prior timeline. But, maybe, that's just it; maybe he'd been a wayward spirit, longing from the sidelines for a chance to capture his heart. He sulks. Of the other collected information, it's a full entree of unimportance. Tsumiki's studying for some kind of nursing degree, Kirigiri takes a full hour to respond with one word, and Naegi is doubtful of Togami's interest in dating those of the same sex (he has to roll his eyes at that one). But the sweet maraschino that makes the whole thing worth his time, is the uncovering that whoever was so crudely entered into his contacts list, is an ex, who apparently also has the ability to come into contact with something Togami is to consume.

"Good morning."

He fumbles; Naegi _streeetches_ his arms over his disaster area of soft cowlicks, cheekbones molding around a yawn and closing his eyes to slits. Three blinks ready him for the day. "What time is it?"

It's _Sent Tuesday, 9:54 AM,_ it's 0205, it's- "Ten."

His elbows crackle in another extension before him. "Man, it must be nice to get all your classes out of the way. You have the whole day now to do whatever."

"Mhm." Man, it must be nice to be an oblivious moron. Though, he perhaps is the cause of his own demise, when an attempt to hide the device under a hand only draws Naegi's attention. Hazel flits to the phone, and to the desk where it'd been put to rest. The empty spot on the desk.

Naegi cocks his head like a confused puppy dog, and Togami wishes twenty years prior had never ever granted him entrance to the world.

"Tell me if you see my phone, would you?" He drops his feet to the floor, brushing past to make his way to, presumably, the washroom. Lone, Togami sputters to himself, then thinks that identical sleek black cases can make anyone's _thing_ look like anyone else's _thing,_ and he slides this _thing_ beneath the guest bed- _Naegi's_ bed, he corrects, with a twist to his innards. Naegi's bed. Naegi's phone. Naegi. Naegi, Naegi, Naegi-

He doesn't know how long he spends stuck in the mental mantra, but it cannot be longer than it takes to shower; the one who's name his thoughts cycle endlessly trounces into the room. Togami frowns at the drips he tracks to the floor, but cannot bring his frozen lips the spurn his presence, because only idiots tell attractive boys covered only by towels at the waist to _get out._

"...I found it," draws the attractive boy's attentive glance. A clearing of throat, and a pointing of finger, and Naegi finds himself bent at the middle to glance to the underneath of his bed.

"Oh!" His fist clamps around the corner of the towel. Dust clings to the tips of his hair when he rises, beaming. "Thanks."

Water droplets divulge his path across the hall- which is _weird_ to think about, now, in many methods. When he returns, he's more modestly done up in denim and cotton, arms folded around a bundle of more. Togami observes his way of dropping the clothing down, right atop the untidy blankets, and turns with a promise to hang them once he comes home. He shakes off his head's rattling singsong of _home, home, home, home, home, ho-_ to bid him goodbye, and good _luck_ , since his schedule leads him currently to his more challenging science course.

Togami's schedule leads him currently to _having the whole day to do whatever_ , and _whatever_ sounds _delightful_. Particularly since his _whatever_ is so hideously wonderful, and when he leaves the building, the scarf's not sufficient; his fingers writhe within their wool prisons.

The counter is low enough to drop his elbows and fall into a leisurely lean.

"Hello," and if they could sound any more bored, he thinks them liable to drop dead, "how may I serve you today?"

Inside the coffee shop, dainty, quaint, tables fill with mid-morning drawl. The minuscule amount of clients paints him a touch of surprise, as it'd be expected more than seven people to be in a _coffee_ shop at ten AM. But all of the losers half asleep in their cinnamon buns profit him null; where he cashes in proceeds, is in the scanning of sight cross this droning barista's chest.

"Hinata," he reads aloud, and his mind makes the instant correlation, "The one with the cookies."

Saying the word _cookie_ drips with immaturity. He clears his throat into a fist, standing straight to full, clearly mature stature.

"Actually, Andou makes the cookies," _Hinata_ says. "But, go off, I guess."

Known for so, Togami chooses instead the decency of public space. "I'd like to speak with you."

"I'm working," in his response, busying himself with the cups stacked at his station. "Do you want a drink, or not?"

His eyes play advocate to demons. "I'd rather not the run the risk of you having _spiked_ it."

Whatever saliva or oxygen passing through his throat seem to choke him. He blinks toward him. " _Sooo_...I'm assuming Naegi told you about that, then."

"No," is his answer yet again, adjusting his glasses and folding in in himself. "I trust you to keep this discussion between us, as well."

Hinata, for as little as Togami knows of him, relies barely on impulse. He seems the analytical type, and understands what Naegi would've found appealing about him. He waits at the register, waits as the barista shouts into the back room for someone to cover him (for someone, really, to stop _making_ _out_ with their boyfriend for ten minutes and work the counter), waits for him to emerge again and usher to a vacant corner table.

"Okay, so obviously this is about Naegi," Hinata collects straight from the get go. His nametag vanishes with a cross of forearms. "But, I'm probably not the best one to go to for this, fair warning."

For _this_ \- his tongue tuts to his teeth. He's sure he cannot possibly know what _this_ entails. That would require Togami to figure it out himself, first.

"You dated him, am I correct?"

"Kind of-"

"How can you partially be dating someone?"

Interruption's not an ally of his, if the narrowing of his glare tells any. "Ever heard of a one night stand, genius?"

Under normal circumstances, he'd challenge the facetious comment, but he's too fulfilled by his gawk to battle back. The rhetoric is apparently of the affirmative. "You had _sex?"_

It steals the sleep from the customers around them. Seven stares flick to the volume of his croon. Far back, the current cashier stifles a giggle behind a manicured hand. Hinata breathes a harsh note.

"Not that I owe you any information," his pupils stab the ceiling briefly, "but, yeah. It was at the beginning of the year."

Togami hasn't proper words. "...I see."

His foot taps in anxious impatience. "Don't tell him I told you about this. It's just...weird."

"In what sense?"

"'Cause," he says pointedly. "It's already weird enough that he still comes in here everyday, and I have to look at him and think about what his dick looks like."

He wants to tell him that, no, he does not _have_ to think about the appearance of his reproductive organs, but chooses wise over wry. "And... _how_ , did this come about?"

Hinata frowns, "You want me to explain how sex works?"

"Not in the slightest." A chime announces the entrance of a demure looking boy. Cash and goods exchange between he and the vendor, who Togami thinks looks just plain idioticwith pounds of fluff peeking out on her hot pink coat beneath her mandatory apron. Stupidity of a different form, by his definition, regains the flick of his gaze. "I want you to explain how your relationship occurred in the first place."

_"Relationship-,"_ comes to mock it. Then he straightens. "You're asking a lot of personal questions for a guy who's name I don't even remember."

"Togami Byakuya," slams between them. "Now answer."

Lips purse, brows knit, sigh releases. "Well, he comes in here everyday at the same time, right? And after, I don't know- a couple weeks?" He nods to himself. "After a couple weeks, I started...talking to him, a little. Y'know, like, _'don't you ever get sick of muffins and macchiatos?'._ And he'd say, _'haha, no, but what else do you recommend?',_ and things escalated, and then...yeah."

It grinds him in the worst of ways that his panacea as to how a start a relationship can possibly be small talk over fucking _muffins_. But, he needs not press for more details, as they flow just as naturally as chatter of breakfast pastries would.

"It wasn't anything really important- to me, at least," he says in sullen syllables. "And he was pretty upset when I told him I wasn't really interested... I'm not really sure how we got on good terms again after that, but I don't think he's mad anymore."

"He should be." Lids squint together a judgemental piercing. "You slept with someone, with no intention to peruse anything beyond it?"

"Hey, listen, buddy, I'm trying to help you out here. I don't need you making me feel worse about myself." Termination of conversation is the way Hinata rises, tucks his hair back into his visor, leaves the one seated with crushing quiet. Then; "...If you're trying to get with Naegi, then, trust me, just be yourself. He's already practically in l-" Then, then, _then_ ; "...He probably likes you more than you think."

_Be himself_ \- excellent, outstanding advice! Togami scoffs into the palm supporting his cheek; as if he's ever anyone _but_ himself. All the conversation's left him with is contempt on his tongue. Hinata had told him everything he's been logical enough to already know. Be himself- no _shit._ Be himself, and that Naegi _probably likes him._ He'd be better off asking of Hagakure's fortune telling than of-

He blinks, fervor pulsing his core _very_ suddenly, but he shakes his head and wishes to bludgeon hammer to it. Entrusting clairvoyance for counseling would do him worse than this session now. The only thing he can ever trust fully is his own instinct, his own _wit._ Thus far, he's led himself to just what he's yearned for. Everything he wants- he's got it. Got to delve into Naegi's personal business without him ever knowing, got to fill the empty space in his room with a perfectly platonic living mate, the whole kit and caboodle. And he scrubs a palm over his tired, tired eyes, and internally realizes that he hadn't even refuted Hinata's assumptions. _If he's trying to get with Naegi-_ what in the world would bring him to that conclusion? Togami'd like to set him true, though feels the chance now mute, and spares not a glance to the employees or customers or potted zinnias on the sills, as he leaves with a echoing ring of announcement bell.


	7. Chapter 7

The ring of the next announcement bell, is neither a ring nor a bell at all. The bell is the door, which Togami's left unlocked in place of having given out a key, and the ring is its slam to the wall, and the touchdown dance of an adrenalized blur.

"Guess who got an eighty seven on their Chem quiz!" Naegi's head tips straight, fixing his mug with two jerked fingers. "This g-! Oh, my God."

The pen loosens in Togami's fingers. He follows, pleased, the line of his sight to having caught the room's second side- _his_ side. His side, which now bears identically to where he'd priorly called home. Beige peeks through at precise intervals of inches between band posters tacked in a row. When he nudges the closet open with a toe, it's aligned with a wardrobe quite familiar to him, sorted between hung shirts and folded jeans, shoes lined below. He spins around, starlight for irises, to the low illumination of deep vermillion.

"You did all this?" He's _awestruck._ His glance casts over the wall's new decor, down to the fluff of his- _his! -_ sable-black pillows and top blankets.

"If you're going to be living here, you may as well have your possessions with you," he clips back, treating the situation with a front of apathy.

A cord trails from the outlet on what could only be his own personal side of the double-wide desk. His phone's screen alights when he connects the two, ditches shoes to hop backward onto the wonted feel of the bed. "This is _awesome!_ " Eloquent. "You're the best, Togami."

"So I've been told." Assignments take priority over amenities once more. Ink scrawls cursive through blank lines. "And I took care of the registration forms. Had to forge your signature several times, but nonetheless, you are now officially boarded in B-2-02."

"That's great." His teeth gleam genuine elation. "This is all so, so great. Thank you."

Ink. Paper. Cursive. "Don't mention it."

Mutual quiet fades about them. He hears vaguely, at some point, Naegi take a call, though it's of little interest to either of them, seemingly. He tunes in, also, to the scratch of branches to the window, to the zips of bags and tying of laces, and the most prominent comes later; a harsh monsoon of releasing breath, tension of an entire day's variety giving way to craved rest.

When he looks up from his papers, it feels as though scissors have replaced his eyeballs.

Naegi wrestles his jacket from his arms to the back of the chair nearest him. Togami wonders what he'd put it on for, if it was just to immediately shuck it away again. His next ponder is to the straw leading from soft drink to soft lips. Emblems of the paper cup allude to a nearby eatery notorious for its low prices- which, to college students, equates to the purest plush of heaven itself.

"Where did you get that?" he asks despite his logic.

Ice rattles with the shake of his hand. "Sarku's," he answers, dropping it into the bin for trash at his bed's end. "We got this _amazing_ spicy tuna maki. I-"

" _How?_ " quirks Naegi's face to confusion.

"Uh, by car?" He blinks. "I told you hours ago, after history, me, Tsumiki, and Hinata were all going to dinner. You said you didn't want to go. Were you even listening?"

He can't imagine they'd held a discussion without his realizing, though does candor that his default response to anything spoken with the inflection of an inquiry that he hasn't quite caught receives negatory. And, in his defense, Naegi asks _a lot_ of questions; his point is proven further when, from the slight curve of his mouth, spills, "Have you even moved at all since I left?"

The crick to his spine says _hell, no_. He presses the cover to his textbook shut, and notices in several rubs of blear that the lamp is much more vibrant now, in the dim light of evening. Orange reflects off his lenses. "Since when you left for Chemistry, yes."

Naegi laughs, though his tone is of slight stern. "It's not healthy to hole yourself up in your room all hours of the day, you know."

Of course he knows. He's been told so for the twenty years it's been his hobby. Being censured is of no desire to him, so he steers them into betterment. "How was dinner?"

If Naegi were more privy to what Togami _is_ like and _isn't,_ then he'd be ruffled by the fact that he's just attempted small talk. But it's not of his worry, so he smiles, smiles and confirms the night's alacrity. The description of their chosen cuisine makes his abdomen protest to its desolation. A point in his favor, Naegi doesn't notice, continues on his merry way speaking prestige of his day, until a loose screw nicks him.

"But...I don't know if it was just me, but...Hinata was acting a little...weird..."

Togami, folding back his bedding, begs, "Whom?"

"Oh," Naegi mumbles, tucking his legs into the cotton of pajama bottoms. "I haven't told you about him, have I?"

His shoulders loll in appreciation at being at last allotted relax, and Togami's answer is a shake to his head. And it's not a lie; he hadn't been asked if he's any knowledge of the person, just of who's informed him of it. It's not a lie.

Naegi huffs. "Okay...well, he's just this... _friend_ of mine." His emphasis on the word reminds Togami not of the sweet way in which it has been used upon himself. Go on, go on- "And we sort of...hooked up, a couple months ago."

"Oh?" He'd be better off majoring in acting courses. He hears Naegi, now laid beneath covers and wrists folded to support his head, swallow.

"Yeah. And- oh, wait, you know him." The taut anxiety that coils him relaxes at the explanation next; "He works at that coffee shop I go to all the time. The one with the really good muffins."

Not to get ahead of the conversation, but Togami would much rather skip over any mentions of the abhorrent treat. "That's how you met, correct?"

"Yeah," he says again. "But he waited until afterward to tell me he has a girlfriend back home. Not to sound like a jerk, but what kind of an _asshole_ does that?"

A seriously intellect-impaired kind of asshole. He begins to understand the meaning behind his contact name. There's reply at his lips, though it disintegrates at new measure.

"Sorry, I'm totally oversharing." He sighs long and heavy, adjusts the position of his arms ever subtle. "I feel like you could write a whole _biography_ on me, and I don't even know your first name yet."

Thoughtful pausing overtakes him. "...Byakuya." Between them glows violet. "But- you said he was acting...how?"

Whatever pusillanimity present the drenches him a moment falls clean. "Just _weird._ Like, he could barely look at me. And then he offered to pay for dinner. I mean, I'm not one to refuse a free meal, but...I don't know. It was strange."

"I'd bet." He shifts against the chill of satin. Ill sensation quells; Hinata had, as evidenced by the lack of speaking of it, kept his word to keep his words. Though he hasn't solution as to his behavior, Togami thinks it'd suit them both equals to never meet again. He's still a touch irked with himself for having ever done so at all. If it should spread about more of his alleged _wanting to get with_ his new roommate, his life'd turn to more hell than the usual burden of existence.

But his new roommate- he's just so... _ugh!_ His insides feel as though taunted by butterflies, as girlishly cliche as it may sound. He vows to be anything but cliche or girlish, shoveling dirt atop the keyhole of his mind that'd ever thought him endearing.

"Togami?"

What's the saying? _Easier said than done?_ He'd attest to that, heart and soul, nail and tooth.

"Yes?"

Rustle. Naegi's as restless awoken as he is a sleeper. "...You have a nice name."

He's never understood the flattery behind that, because, "It's not so much mine as it is my family's, really."

"No..." His tongue lay heavy to his mouth, thick flowers stuck to pond's surface. " _Byakuya_. I've never heard it before."

The owner of it hasn't either- not in a way that ignites the flame to the Apollo 11 of his heart. Not in the way he craves to hear again and again, breathless and begging, claws in his back and lips on his neck.

Because that's what friends do, right?

Togami chooses, rather than disclose the filthy VHS in his head, to snap back a correction to his pronunciation. Humor huffs from his nose, into the frosted lake of night's dark cape. "Guess I need more practice with it."

"Feel free use it more often," he allows, before it's able to be corralled.

Smile. Smirk. Simper. "Okay then, _Byakuya."_

Then it's just idle talk, minuscule, meaningless, and Togami's hardly hearing it, because he's no longer Togami, he's _Byakuya_ , and he's almost certain if he hears that angel's coo of it one more time, his ribs will all shatter from the pounding behind them.

"You know what's weird?" Naegi says some time post, yawning the edges of midnight's predecessor. "How much bigger the girl's dorms are than ours."

"I suppose," he humors, sleep written in his closed eyes.

"Kirigiri said they have a kitchen and stuff, so that they don't have to go out late at night and pin the school with a lawsuit if something skeevy happens."

"Sensible." And he would know. "Though, rather indicative of gender roles. I can only imagine the uprising it's caused among the feminist type."

He hardly hears the soft laugh. "I think the RA was advocating for some kind of change, actually. I don't see why; the set up over there is sweet. I wish _we_ had bunkbeds."

"Oh, yes, because _that's_ a smart idea," he scorns. "Give the world's largest convocation of stoners beds that are seven feet off the ground. That surely won't end with any broken bones."

He most definitely catches this noise; Togami concludes that Naegi suffers from a mortal case of overexhaustion. But how his amusement bonks out in little wheezes, as if Togami's the most adept of comedic masterminds, bleeds too sweet to wish it quiet.

"Sounds- Sounds good to me." His lungs demand payment, which he permits before proclaiming, "I call bottom bunk."

"Like _hell_ you do." Perhaps it's the sheen of mutual tired. Togami doesn't fret over the fact that they've no reason for disagreement, scuffle, argument- there's nothing to do so over but metaphor.

Melody. The nighttime's lucky, Togami thinks, to drink in unalloyed the divinity of his joy. "Okay, okay, we can both have the bottom. We can push two beds together, like on those old black and white TV shows."

And Togami freezes, because, well- frankly it doesn't sound like such a bad idea. A quite possible one, too, actually, and- stop it, stop it, _stop it._

Naegi next faces the wall, litheness expanding in another _yawn_ of finality. Their interchanged pleasantries aren't curt so much as quick. So much as quick, so much as pinning to his place with that tantalizing _goodnight, Byakuya_ that burns his face carmine.


	8. Chapter 8

_(Sent Wednesday, 1:08 AM): HE SAID I CAN CALL HIM BY HIS FIRST NAME_  
_(Sent Wednesday, 1:08 AM): IM_  
_(Sent Wednesday, 1:08 AM): DYING HOLY SHUT  
_ _(Sent Wednesday, 1:08 AM): SHIT*_

Only morons leave their phones on the desk when they depart for the restroom. He has to stifle his chortle from the students seated nearby.

_(Wednesday, 1:14 AM): tsumiki: AAAAAA Im so happy for yyou Naegi_

Togami is, too. Or, at the very least, placated. A sound alerts him to snap his head to the door, but it's merely been slight of mind. He looks down again, flicks a finger to more recent messages. There isn't time for him to inspect a near full five day's worth, though he's glad he's stumbled upon this particular topic of last week's middle dawn. The next is not nearly as fulfilling.

_(Sent Friday, 12:13 PM): yeah i sent you the doc.  
_ _(Sent Friday, 12:15 PM): also........this is unrelated but........did you see_

_(Friday, 12:20 PM): tsumiki: See what?_

_(Sent Friday, 12:21 PM): tsumiki...did you SEE  
_ _(Sent Friday, 12:21 PM): actually we have trig in like 10 mins i'll just tell you then_

He plays off his sudden curse as a cough. Of the past weekend, there's hardly more to take in. The last text in the conversation with _FUCK YOU!_ remains as he'd last read. Surprise is his color to find no updates between the sender and his self-described best friend, either, but Togami supposes touch screens must play adversarial to the gloves he's yet to witness her without. But- _Naegi._ He scrolls through the list of chats anew. The oldest, stuffed to the very bottom, is where he ventures next, and finds it scant. Finds, too, that there is again no true name, and wonders how Naegi can possibly keep track of whom it is he's ever talking to.

_(Sent 09/06): you are never going to believe this_

_(09/06) : believe what?_

_(Sent 09/06): remember that cute guy i was like obsessed with in highschool_

_(09/06) : which one_

_(Sent 09/06): seriously fujisaki_

_(09/06)_ : im kidding!   
_(09/06) : the tall blonde right?_

_(Sent 09/06): yes_  
_(Sent 09/06): well_  
_(Sent 09/06): he's here_  
_(Sent 09/06): at my college. like he goes to the same college as me  
_ _(Sent 09/06): WHAT ARE THE ODDS_

_(09/06) : wow, its like fate!_

_(Sent 09/06): yeah but i dont think he remembers me  
_ _(Sent 09/06): like i dont know if i should be like 'hey long time no see' or just act like we've never met and go from there_

( _09/06) : well...  
_ _(09/06)_ : you didnt really talk much in hs did you

_(Sent 09/06): one time he asked me what time it was  
_ _(Sent 09/06): that was the highlight of my senior year tbh_

For whatever reason, it stops there, and picks up next after several moons rest.

_(Sent 09/09): FUJISAKI YOU ARE NNEVER GOING TO BELIVEE THIS  
_ _(Sent 09/09): HE LIVES RIGH ACR OS.S THE HHALL_

_(09/09) : oh my goodness_

As much as he'd like to continue, Togami figures he hasn't time heavy left to dawdle. He picks apart the important bits- one of which sends him into lurched posture of shock.

_(09/09) : that probably wouldnt work  
_( _09/09) : some girls at my school wanted an excuse to talk to someone, so they banged on the wall a bunch of times just so he'd come over to complain about the noise  
_ _(09/09) : that seems a little desperate if you ask me though  
_ _(09/09) : oh btw i meant to ask you if you see Oowada could you tell him i say hi?  
_ _(09/09) : hello  
_ _(09/09)_ : did you fall asleep or something?

Sleep is the furthest action from his highstrung self. It should no longer astonish him, the secrets he uncovers, though he's painted just as so despite it. Firstly, he knows now his memory's in need of repair, as any semblances of pre-college Naegi Makoto aren't present within it. Secondly, he realizes he's been a marionette this whole time, actions forced along by plots of others' concoction. It leaves him with a sense of grudging; a tad _angry,_ even. Just knowing Naegi's been on top of it all since day one...he feels himself an utter fool. Firstly, secondly, thirdly, fourthly, fifthly- Naegi is much more astute than he lets on.

And fifthly, fourthly, thirdly, secondly, firstly, he's standing directly next to him, peering at the blank spot that'd been home to his device, and to the hand in which it now rests.

"If you wanted to see something, you could've just asked." It passes into the fabric cradle at his abdomen as he sits. "I don't have a lot to hide."

Words may as well be molten magma. They share a similar burn on his throat. "I'm..." _A gossip. An eavesdropper. Just as bad as those acrylic-nailed catty girls that pop hearts like bubblegum._

What he _is_ is never divulged. He turns to the page of equations before him, digs his pen into distracting scribbles on the border. Shame belongs nowhere within him; never has he cared enough to express it, never had anyone important enough to deserve it.

"You know the only way to make this right, right?" Naegi steals a look his way. Togami pales a shade, because he doesn't know, right, and the smirk he's facing and the up turned, waiting palm don't help. "My turn."

Confidence- now _that's_ his mode. Naegi's a hue of surprise at how easily he's gifted the phone, a model upward from his own. No codes deter him from his goal, and Togami's watching with a glint of superiority about him at the fall of Naegi's mettle.

"Do you talk to _anyone?_ " His thumbs rolls speed through the absence of messages.

"I do make the occasional call home." He lifts himself a poised overture at the search through his vacant camera roll. "Other than that, this device is utterly useless to me."

Defeat billows from him. The screen clicks gentle to the table. Fingers drum aside it, then dart forward in a snatch he wasn't anticipating.

"What are you doing?" Togami grips his fingers a noose around his wrist. Pinned to place by it, Naegi wiggles his devious hold on the base of his laptop.

"Making us even."

He pouts when his hands are wrested off, and are better on not returned lest be crushed in the snap shut.

"No." He pushes it to the corner. "I didn't go through your _computer_. This is an entirely separate deed."

Pout, pout, pout. "If I had one, you probably would've." Perk. "But- okay, fine. I'll let this go. I'm changing my passcode, though."

"Fair enough."

Fair, sure. Humane- that's a vying issue. Togami envisions the next, _Sent Monday, 2:32 AM: dude, tsumiki, i, like, totally caught him snooping thru my business?! like, what's up with that?! i mean he looked like, super hot while doing it, but still!?_ and his composure is rioted against. But when voice again meets him, it's bland talk of their current class, which captures closure shortly after- thank _fuck_ -and allows their fleeting. They wave and part and fade dual directions, but the blaze up his skin prevents further trot. He recalls, the afternoon autumn teasing exposed flesh, of wisdom bestowed to him. Wisdom, sage, regarding his holing up in his room, regarding a dip in his health. The throb to his head could perhaps be of hypochondria, perhaps the pressure of _everything_ lashing her nasty whips upon his scapula. His bedroom, _their bedroom_ , is the last place he longs for.

What he really longs for, as he tucks his cuffs back beneath his coat sleeve, is a crumble of sweetness behind his teeth.

He really wants a muffin.

And Togami receives always what Togami so desires. So he turns, he turns and he walks, and he'd have to be a lunatic to ever step foot inside the devil's own personal Starbucks, particularly when both the insipid barista and the one who draws them mutual are present within. But he _really_ wants a muffin, but he's sure there's other places to acquire one. Places like the built in cafeteria on the university's ground floor. Crouching in the corner of the vast mess hall's hardly different than doing the same in his dorm, but it's _so much_ different, and the pastry soothes his nerves better than the strongest kick of Valium.

His nerves, ones that still tramp ragged through his bones. Come to think of it, come to very intently think of it, with bitter brew staining his throat and crumbles stuck to his fingertips, the reaction accepted is not how one would normally strike response to entering a situation such as the one presented before. Surely, were their roles swapped, he'd be a heathen suctioning crawls up the wallpaper, shredding trust like the cheap paper ring around the midst of his coffee cup. He breathes out sharply. Naegi Makoto is certainly something.

The one who joins him next would agree. Togami starts at her presence, gaze the most eloquent silence he's ever to hear. He'd ask of her reasoning, of her mindset, her goals, but the imposing aura surrounding her is a trench for him to slip into. Gloved palms drop to the steel table afront him.

"Do it," is all Kirigiri has to give him. Togami challenges her cynically.

"And just what do you suggest I _do?_ "

A shock of lilac swishes when she rises to turn. Bootsteps fall delicate, one before each, arms poised to either side like the picture of etiquette she raised herself to be. Though, it could be thought rude not to face the one spoken to, which she hasn't the care to, hasn't the need. "What you so badly want to."

He wants to bark harsh, wants to make a scene and be dramatic. He wants to crush his wrappers in a fist and bean her in the back of the skull. In her fortune, she's too far from his range, already, so he ditches his litter in a corner barrel, and he's still wiping his hands when he's meant to take the handle of his room's knob. And he's still thinking about that demon, with her tiny skirt and knives for eyes, and he's still thinking she ought to stay on her own turf of the psychology-forensics department where she's out of his way. If he could, he'd split her connection to Naegi as a whole; their attached at the hip relationship unsettles him enough, even without turning the mixture heterogeneous by the addition of her agonizing inquisitiveness.

And- _oh!_ She thinks herself the cat's meow- _miaulement_ _du_ _chat!_ -and he cannot, will not stand her, and the mere fact that he'd ever been thought a candidate for _getting_ _along_ with her makes his skin follicles crawl.

And- oh, good Lord.

In a tentative caution, he pockets his key, sets down his bag, fixes the unexpected occupant in confusion.

Naegi's an angry crier, a laugh-hard-enough-at-internet-videos-to-cry crier, and, Togami most recently discovered, a crier at happy endings to sordid trashy romance flicks. But he never knew him to be a _sad_ crier- which, when he retraces his steps to check over, is a rather moronic thing to live in oblivion to. He's a visual learner to the tips and tricks of him. But he's earned the full show.

Conversing's a no go. The best he can manage: a cough to garner drippy gaze.

Floor biting haunches. He makes a similar sound, gargled with the wet of throat, and the wet of his cheeks, and the wet of the carpet, where his fingers sink into.

"H-Hi." Sleeve to face, feet beneath him. "I...I forgot my textbook. Uh- sorry, I didn't think you'd come back so soon."

He does not ask to be told what's happened. Not until he peeks around the bend of the desk, and closer scrutiny to the area shows him the splash of shards.

Knuckles pinken the circumference of his eyes. "I forgot my textbook."

"And?"

He shuffles, sniffles, dares not meet the stare. "So I came back to get it, before class. And I guess- I-I guess Kuwata was waiting for me, and he started flipping out on me over," his arms gesture to the mess, "over the freakin' _lava_ _lamp_ , 'cause we both bought it and he wanted it back. And I said, if I paid for half of it, why should he get to keep it? And-And he said-" Hiccuping sobs threaten their return; an even breath chases them off. "He said, _well, I'm not giving you your inhalers and your migraine meds until you give me the lava lamp,_ and I was like, _dude, I kinda need those to live_ \- plus, they were in _my_ nightstand, anyway. But he wouldn't give up, and he followed me in here and grabbed it off the desk, and I grabbed it back, and then it," Crackles replace his voice. "And then it _broke_ , and spilled everywhere, and I'm not crying over a stupid lava lamp. I'm just...I'm crying, because I'm-I'm-I'm- because everything's _changing_ , and I..I really liked that lava lamp..."

It's a tsunami, so much coming at him all at once. Togami knows the process now; he's to coddle and console, speak soothing coos with pats to his back. But that's all so _disgusting_ , while, less so, is treading from the room at large. It's dark, from Naegi's point of view, in the cover of palms on his face. He looks up, flushed and sniveling, to a clump of tissue offered his way. The claiming of it's ginger. "Th...Thanks..."

His most effective reaction is to shove aside glass with the toe of his shoe, and crouch low as allowed to scrub a washcloth against the fluids currently ruining his carpet. Togami's never cleaned a day in his life, and Naegi can tell within seconds, leading to his twinning position at his side. Another rag twists in his hold.

"...Sorry," spills after a near minute's five of scrubbing. He tries his best at a laugh. "That must have been awkward for you."

"I wouldn't say so." Fibers crush around his cloth. The liquid's not quite pure water, though he believes it harmless so long as he doesn't ingest any, so the damp on his palm concerns him null. "This is a normal occurrence between friends, no?"

Fabrics clash one another, friction a tingling record scratch. He scowls down at it, but finds himself more questioning than annoyed at the pause to the second. Blinks travel from the cloth to the squeeze around it, to the starlit expression dancing to his right.

"I...um," Naegi spits upon noticing the leer. "I can finish cleaning from here."

Immediately, the other does not comply in halting. It takes another set of harsh up-downs of cloth before they're forced to by the laying of hand atop his. The laying of hand atop his, a phenomenon not once experienced by the initiator's pawn, not in any way, especially not like _this_. Not in this scalding, screaming, manifested grinding to dust his overall overall.

Naegi's mouth draws a low line, pulling the items together into one hand once he retracts his, but Togami...he lures him again midst with stunning charm in the literal sense, and Naegi cannot alter any coordinates of his position; fingers graze his hand, now bare, now flat to the carpet between them. The fifth touches his, dares in moments sans respiration to curl slow together.

"I can...I can..." Naegi grapples again, and he's correct- he _can,_ can do so many, many things, things Togami's never known, seen, thought. Things that shred claws through his capillaries, then coax him back to beg the aorta severed too. Naegi can do so many, many things. Can and maybe _does_ , though it's carved in blurred stone. Maybe, perhaps, mayhaps, he's the one who _does_ _it_ , or it's not his _it_ to _do_ , and Togami's, for once in all his years, obeying something someone else has demanded he _do_ \- but, it isn't something, it's _it_.

Neither is positive who does it, really, but they do know for certain, that their foreheads clink together hard enough to almost play dull to saturation, and that one of them has lips that taste like pumpkin spice. Togami would bet it is those of his other, the ones that meld so tender to his own, and _dear_ _fucking_ _Christ_ , he's kissing Naegi Makoto, his perfectly platonic roommate, and the fact that it's a broken piece of lighting that went obsolete in the 1980's that's connected them is just so goddamn _ludicrous_.

The lift of steps are not enough to sunder them; nothing could, no force on the gorgeous green of the earth with the might to. He falls back, or was pushed back, but either way his spine's acquainted to his mattress, streams of latent rivulets drying on the sear of Naegi's face. He falls or was pushed, and there's hot weight clamoring on him and mewls hotter still escaping the seal, and Togami didn't notice Naegi slipping his tongue into his mouth, but it's there and it's _hot_ and he's so damn _hot_ by every definition and he's going to lose what minimal strands of his sanity still cling to him in torrid desperation should this hot, hot, screaming hearth crackle onward any longer.

It's doused, to dismay and delight, stomped out by interruption. "Togami," he says, hands exploring his shoulders like they belong between their grooves. He says- _whispers,_ in a breathless gasp -he says, "Togami," and those hands, those fingertips, those palms, they pulse into his soft, soft blonde, and Naegi's whispering/gasping/saying, "I have to go to class."

And, to paraphrase the most adept quills of literature's fine history, that just fucking _sucks_.

His knees, bent o'er the side, and his back, flat to the surface; and hands unable to be called his own, they slide into their personal territory. Naegi's the queer rigidity struck through him, legs taking to themselves like it's their trial run, and they've'nt the faintest flash of meeting whilst he careens about gathering his things. He ducks his face when he's forced to swivel being toward the other, now postured with his knuckles ivory to the edge below him. Togami furls into malice at the tan paper cover surrounding nine hundred pages on useless arithmetic, and it's that book, _that_ _book_ , that's caused all this...he bolds to call it _trouble._ All this trouble, a crying boy and a broken lamp, and forevermore now the decimation of ambiguity.

All this trouble, and yet, he still catches the glimpse of a grin before it vanishes behind door's click.

And- oh, what he wouldn't give to live it over tenfold.


	9. Chapter 9

Autumn's gotten a makeover. The new opinion she takes in isn't as much revolt as it is indifference.

After all, he does favor it over the year's other three semesters.

Bared bark is no enemy. And, occasionally, sure, the rain-wet leaves decide to stick like spearmint to his soles, and, yeah, mid-November is so biting as to require of him the gloves, the scarf. The coat, too, at last, but the sleek silver of it only rises his outward appeal- which, as of late, he's been fussing over more than ever.

"Byakuya!" A blur of tinted hue catches his eye. "Over here."

He graces the designated area of the courtyard with his presence, discards his accessories whilst setting self to seat. To his left side niggles the vex of low rumbling _meow_ \- and she doesn't even glance up from her chamomile to intonate a pleasantry. Instead, one comes from the third, to the beat of his smile and the beat of his pulse.

"Sorry about not coming home last night," Naegi says once they've properly addressed, cup's rim pressing to mouth. "We totally lost track of time studying. It was just easier for me to stay over."

"I see," because he does. What he does not, is why their _Thursday, 9:14 AM: meet for coffee?_ destination had been chosen as the outdoor tables of the commons. Breeze skirts through Naegi's hair, compels him to tug his jacket tighter about him, knocks leaves idle from branches canopying them. He's sure that Kirigiri's legs must be positively blue under the thin cotton of her argyle leggings, but he doesn't comment, just accepts silently the drink slid his direction.

Naegi puckers a reticent second, then takes on plight of conversation. Togami gathers it's something of his language class upcoming in the next half hour, and he nods like he's listening, but his attention cannot be bought to quit falling to his side. Mostly on the account that there's someone's on _him,_ too. The shine in her lilacs is logical as always.

"And-" The oneway discussion takes a breather at the vibration at his hip, and he's the deficit to poise regards instead at the message he's received. Chance presents itself in his distraction.

"Say yes," she murmurs behind her cup's lid. Togami's own conceals a fury of downcurve.

" _Stop it."_ Not that he's a clue what she's talking about, but if it's anything similar to her advice column printed and tacked to him yesterday, he'd accept nothing less than a hundred meter segregation. Because, as far as he's concerned, yesterday never happened. Yesterday, he'd fled to his dorm directly after Calculus, and Naegi to _his_ usual place, and he'd sat and done homework and then he'd gone to bed, and this morning found a rare use for his phone from the text sent from his perfectly platonic roommate, who'd slept at a friend's house, because that friend's perfectly platonic roommate was gone, too, for the night, so there'd been an extra bed, and, yes, they _were_ actually studying, and, no, it _wasn't_ just a way for Naegi to avoid completely their joined acquaintance after having made out for a full minute on Togami's bed, and probably would've done more, oh so much more, had it not been for his obligation as a responsible, mature college student with a presentation to commit to in his Trigonometry class. And that responsible, mature student had _not_ forgotten his book.

Kirigiri can't bring herself to oblige. "Say yes."

And Togami says, " _No,"_ because he's a rather dirty bastard.

She doesn't bother to tell him he hasn't heard the question yet, as she's never one to blurt what needn't be. Steam fogs her cheeks into another muting sip.

He hates her guts.

"I've to get going," says she, a sudden flame. They watch the sweep of hair from a shoulder to replace it by her tote strap. Naegi looks up to her risen form, and she can tell what he's about to ask without his muscles even flinching. The answer- no, she does not _really_ have to go so soon, but thinks it better for her to. The answer- and Naegi slits through her with sniper scopes of panic. Togami reads in them some kind of plea that turns his stomach.

"...Oh, okay." His head bobs once. "Have fun in Chemistry. I'll talk to you later."

A smirk guides her turnaway. "I'm sure you will."

Togami guesses the blush that he spies next was hoped to go unnoticed. He does justice by not mentioning it, nor notes the underneath of the table that quivers with leg's jittering. His wrist takes his gaze. Sunlight glisters on the face of his rolex.

"I-" Jitter, jitter, jitter, glance far off. Togami bears upward at the struggle, awaits continuation.

The napkin playing coaster to his drink flutters at the strength of his dropped breath. He fixes the one cross him with utter aplomb, so much that he's to hide his vague surprise at it. And he grins- teeth spread gleaming white. Togami's pulse _soars._

"And just what's gotten you so... _cheerful?_ " It's nearly facetious, nearly a jeer.

His lips- _ugh,_ those _lips -_ simmer to an idle titter. "I just remembered. It's Thursday."

Under his bangs, a brow perks. He shifts to tilt forward his jaw, catches shut the part to his mouth before stupidity can spill out. He's to inquire just what's so special of today's Thurs, then recalls something himself. "Ah. I suppose you're glad to return home for the week's end."

Naegi nods. "Yeah. I know it's only been a few months, but..." He pauses long enough for Togami to snap into reality again, snap his gaze away from the movement to his lips in speech. "...but I've, uh, really missed my family."

What he takes as fault in smoothness- he takes it for the intimate details, not the intimate touch of being caught in too-deep observation. But, damn them both, he's overthinking again. But, damn _himself_ , he'd been the one looking in the first place, looking and thinking and dare he admit fantasizing, and the next moment known is of Naegi staring at _him_ , all tables turned and all bounds broken, and it's not until a near full minute that Togami realizes he recognizes the expression of raised brows and tight mouth, and he blinks into real time. "...What?"

"I said," he starts, wind crossing his words, "I have a question for you."

Togami has a question, too. It's, why does Naegi feel the need to ask so many fucking questions all the time? Togami has a question, too. It's, when did so much perspiration mar his palms, when did his glasses get so fogged, when did he ever even decide at all to tie up mutuality in a pretty little bow with anyone, nevermind, nevermind, nevermind _this_ anyone?

Togami has a question, too, and it's just the same as his previous aloud. "What is it?"

Then it's _Naegi_ who's hands are sweating, who's entire being's muddy with worry. Behind his current woes, Togami wonders back to an eerily comparable situation, one that's closure was a mouthful of pot brownies. It seems so long ago, whatever unsaid inquiry had been left there before, and it _is,_ though he hasn't yet brought himself to let it be filtered away. But- _whatever._ That's not important. Right now is important. Right now, with Naegi fidgeting in the second chair diagonal to him, right now, with leaves scuffing dry across concrete.

Should his hands move, they'd _tremble._

"Do you want to go to dinner with me tonight?"

Sense- everything makes it, then. Sense is the foretelling past detective lips. Sense is nowhere within him; it flees to the imposition of immediate instinct.

"Yes." Quickest he's ever spoken, embarrassingly so. It feels good to say it, nonetheless, relieving of a stress he'd had not. It feels good to say it, even despite it being interruptive to whatever stutters Naegi's rushed to cushion the inquiry with. Would feel awful, feel acerbic, feel abysmal, to be nudged in recollection that Kirigiri Kyouko's now two for two; thankfully he's too preoccupied by his current state of outlier on the overall graph of his natural heartbeat. Because he has just said _yes_ , and Naegi's face very nearly splits in two by his breathtaking beam.

"Okay." Palms drum a short melody into his thighs. His nods are heavy loose. "Cool. That's...cool."

He supposes it is. _Cool_. Absolutely one hundred fifty percent terrifying. Either works.

Then it all dissolves and Naegi's still smirking a storm as he leaves behind his usual chime of promise to _see him later,_ walks off with hands in his pockets and more verve in his step than Togami has ever witnessed.

And now he's just agreed to go to dinner with Naegi Makoto, Makoto Naegi, N-A-E-G-I his R-O-O-M-M-A-T-E, they're going to dinner, going to sit across from one another and grapple for small talk and eat inexorbitance. Maybe, then, at the end of the night, they'll- they'll just _talk_ some more. Talking. Nothing else's needed, nor desired.

Friends go to dinner together on a daily basis, he thinks as he's adjusting the lapels of his suit before the mirror for the thousandth time. He's sure, entirely so, that Naegi had simply meant go to dinner, not _go_ _to dinner._ Friends go to dinner together all the time, Naegi being no exception. Just recently he'd done so with certain associates Togami would rather not name, since they tend to blanch him with sour scorn. Still, he _thinks_ of them, thinks of that boring, stupid boy and- _Hinata_ , he hates him enough to turn the flowerbeds of his tranquility into nailbeds. He hates him because, as aforementioned, he's an _idiot_ , to have had all that- All That, in his mind -to have had all that and disposed of it like dust in a pan. He hates him because, one may call his crave for something another's gotten, he's _envious_.

One may call it that, but Togami would not.

Shoes press beneath the ankle length of his black socks, and he notes the difficulty at his keeping of steadied hand. But he's not nervous. Naegi had asked him to go to dinner, not to go on a date with him. If he'd wanted a date, he'd've requested one, surely. It's not a date. It's dinner. It's dinner, and he'd agreed. Because Kirigiri had told him to- _hell_ no _._ It's dinner, and he'd agreed, because it's just dinner, and he'd need to eat either way. It's just dinner with a colleague. It's dinner.

He steps from the lip of the dormitory's lobby door at exactly six-oh-one post meridiem. Instructions he'd received had entailed meeting Naegi at an average rate restaurant down the main road. Friends always travel separately when they're going to the same place, friends always feel the world should soon drop stars from her sky to the sight of their other devastatingly handsome friend, waving to him from the foyer of an eatery.

Togami is so prepared to be proved incorrect, that he's rather disappointed to be right.

"Hey!" Naegi smiles up at him. Casualty is the press of his clothing, and Togami's just a layer self conscious to be in full black tie. If Naegi finds it peculiar, he says nothing of it. Instead he says, with a flourish of gesturing arm, "Meet my parents."

Death would be better to shake hands with, right now. But, he holds his own out despite the suicidal crave, takes first that of his father. He's meeting his parents, not even in a _meeting_ _his_ _parents_ kind of way, in a _hello nice to meet you I'm your son's friend/roommate and we've never once had romantic ideologues of each other how do you do?_ kind of way.

Geniality's in their genes, evidently, judging by their warmth of introductions, by his father's clap to his bicep with free hand, his mother's compliment to his attire. Togami takes straighten to his already meticulous jacket, peers silence into the only one of the bunch he actually knows well enough to not be horribly gauche toward. Naegi appears as though he makes to fill the air with idle chatter, but he's caught by a pause and a blink, and whips his head to his left.

"Oh! And this is my sister," he tells of the girl at his side, not quite a head taller than him but could approach so by another summer's end. "Komaru, this is Togami."

"Togami," she repeats, opting for a polite bow with hands clasped behind back. He can't help noticing, when she again lifts her face, that it bears a striking resemblance to her sibling's. "Like, Togami from across the hall?"

"Just Togami," he corrects, and Naegi looks a flash of far off amusement. He adores it.

They're seated with relative hospitality, their trio taken separate from the two eldest, because his mother had so courteously suggested to _let the kids have their fun_ with something wicked in her eyes that replaced that prior flashing amusement in flat agitation. And she'd chuckled, and she'd gone with her husband to a nearby booth whilst they'd claimed their own.

He's surprised at how conversational she is, instantly diving into questions of how school's going, how his friends are, how his grades are (which he dances wisely around with a topic change). Surprised, and appreciative, as it's easier to slip into empirical contemplation whilst the others are occupied in dialogue. But as he's tipping into the internal realm of conjecture, she chooses to be _conversational_ with him.

"So, if you aren't _Togami from across the hall_ ," her elbows clatter to the tabletop, fixing him with query, "then, who are you?"

He never gets to answer. It strikes a rapt chord, because he's certainly capable of speaking to people when he should want to, but Naegi (the elder) seems to think he's to bid control over it. If it were anyone else, Togami would find it quite irking.

"He's my roommate, Komaru," and she tilts her head, reminiscent again to another of her brother's quirks.

"What happened to that ginger guy that was there when we were moving you in?"

Naegi frowns, until he hears, "Struck out," from over the table, and he's to duck his head to conceal a fit of humor. Between them, laughter and smirks alike, Komaru divvies her sight.

"Nothing, nothing," he coughs to her demand to know just what's brought about this spell. "Just, living with Kuwata didn't really work out, so I found someone better."

That peels his smirk away, because he's someone better, he's better, better, better. And... _wow._

Green eyes, the second prettiest pair he's ever seen, narrow to the apparent inside joke, then bat away all contempt. "You really let Makoto move in with you?" The _you_ in question perks dubiety. She laughs, "Yeesh, lose a bet, or something?"

He'd think it more so wager placed in his favor, if he believed at all in luck. Protests arise from the one of the losing end of the bon mot, leaving Togami with the slightest nostalgia for something he's never had; such a surplus in siblings, and not a single close relationship among them. And the pokes and prods that pass between the one's on their booth's second side remind him all too sharply of that. As does the flutter of breath past Komaru's lips, and the playful cross of her arms. "I'm just teasing you! But, seriously, you are _not_ easy to live with. You leave your socks everywhere, you puke more than anybody I've ever met, you snore, you-"

He grabs the fingers she holds upwards as list counters. "And _you're_ loud and bossy, but I still love you anyway."

She'd retort, were it not for the interruption of their server, who takes orders in a span of a minute's commencement to conclusion. A finger touches to her chin in thought, though within another speed's span, the same finger's dripping in condensation of her pink lemonade. Naegi brings up something regarding _her_ academic performance and she alights into tangents about her _spectacular_ junior year so far.

"I don't know if I'm doing so good in one of my classes, though..." comes partial way into her monologue. In half sarcasm, Togami says, "English?" Her sudden force of affirmation almost shocks the ice water from his mouth.

"How'd you know?"

"He's an ESPer," says Naegi. Her elbow nudges his ribs.

Togami calms himself a drag. "Merely a suspicion. You wouldn't be the first of your family to suffer from poor comprehension."

" _Oooh!_ " She focuses sideways. "Are you failing a class?"

He goes to refuse, because a sixty-four is _not_ failing, but she's already turned and wrapped her bratty little sister hands around the edge of the wood behind her, dark forest hair curtaining to one side of her leant form. "Mom, did you hear that? Makoto's failing all his classes, and drinking and partying when he's supposed to be studying-"

The back of her blouse is gripped in a fist, and Togami finds it awfully difficult not to burst with bemusement at his vexed expression. Laughter does bound from the booth adjacent theirs, taking it for a joke despite them being already common enough worries. He flicks attention to the two across him, behaving now more seven and two than seventeen and twenty.

"Quit it, Komaru," he snaps with an edge beneath ludic overtones. He slaps away the touch that comes jeeringly toward him. "I haven't seen you since August, and in twenty minutes, you already manage to annoy me."

"I thought you _loooved_ me," she teases, poking her tongue toward him. Another finger-jab lands to his middle, which shimmies him to the brink of the cushion below them.

"Okay, that's it. Togami, scoot over."

Togami hardly has time to obey before there's a hip prompting his; he slides along the tandem seating. Komaru pouts from her lonesome throne.

She starts next something benign, and they're listening, sure, and they're engaging her ever so mildly in her talk of her last field hockey match, and Togami has no interest in sports whatsoever, but he's a polite guest who's no qualms with just _listening._ No issues with the fundamentals of listening, but when it comes time for the real and true action, _that_ is when his blank is drawn. Because, he's reliving the yesterday that never happened; because the hand he rests between he and his new seat partner is brushed hot at the edges. When his gaze goes to his lap, he finds the space asunder their smallest fingers to be separate no more, and if it's unintentional, he's forced to wonder how the initiator does not notice. Then there's absolutely zero chance that he knows not what he's doing- the pad of said finger moves to graze across Togami's knuckles, all whilst above the table, no signs are given off of any misdeeds.

Ventilation would do him wonders.

" _Naegi..."_ slips beneath his breath, not at all in methods enchanting, but plainly so he's to no longer feel the seizure of clamp about his throat. There's a time and there's a place, and that time is never and that place is nowhere.

"Yeah?" Komaru chirps, severing the midst of her story. Togami glances up, unknowingly relieved to be entranced by something less taxing. Long seconds of staring lasso over them before her head tips back straight and she's outletting a lengthy vowel. " _Ohh,_ wait. The other one. Sorry." She sighs into the palm that goes to support her chin. "Y'know, I've never understood why we don't go by our first names. I think we all ought to be a little more western, don't you?"

The _no_ and the _maybe_ fall in sync, and if only they were each a clear enough head to realize how well they serve as indicators of their respective personalities. They meet in the middle; Naegi decides it is he whom shall first provide oration. "I wouldn't mind that, honestly. I kinda...I dunno, I think my name's pretty nice."

"Too bad it's a girl's name." And, as if it's a rehearsed part of his life thus far, "It's _unisex!_ "

Komaru fans a hand, eyes pinched close by her lurid smile. "But why'd _you_ say no?" The fanning gestures his direction, his folded-arms, narrowed-sapphires direction. "Don't like your name?"

He's never considered it past face-value. His title's a sensible one, he thinks- atypical enough not to group him with anyone of average stature, though there is the annoyance of its constant mispronunciation should he ever allow it be spoken. Occurrences of such are more rare than the name itself.

"It is...fair." Far be it from him to ever claim a trait of himself lower than faultless.

Naegi, naturally, has his own opinion. "I like it. It suits you."

And Togami spares him no reply, because he's still rattled from the partial hand holding. Komaru, though- she's a pail to spill of saltwater and curiosity. To her nagging _what is it, what is it?,_ she's given her answer, and it's as if the domino's clinks can actually be _heard_ among the group.

"Oh, my God," splays across. " _Now_ I know what's so familiar about you!"

"Familiar?" he begs, touching his frames back to their place.

She nods, slipping teeth from her straw before relaying response. "My friend talks about you _all_ the time. I didn't think of it from your last name, though, 'cause it's always _Master Byakuya_ this, _Master Byakuya_ that."

"Good _Lord..."_ The fixing of glasses proves useless in their next slip down his bridge at the sudden jerk of neck. "Do not tell me you associate with that absolute _freak_ of nature, Fu-"

"Fukawa Touko?" His confirmation is a misery's groan into palms. She gives a slight nod. "Yep. She's, like, one of my best friends. ...I sorta get what you mean by the whole freak thing, though. Not gonna sugar coat things here."

Between their verbal interplay, and the setting down of dishes at each a person from their waitress' return, Naegi grapples for the chance to ask, "...Who's Fukawa Touko?"

"An infernal lunatic who went to our high school," Togami sneers, snapping his chopsticks apart with the virility one would a spinal cord. "I'd call her default state more a stalker than even a human being. What on _earth_ could you possibly find appealing about her?"

Komaru captures a portion of soba into her cheek. "She's not _that_ bad. We became friends last year, when I needed an essay done last minute and she offered to... _help me out._ Wink, wink."

"Hey, mom," Naegi mumbles low to himself, chin in one hand and drink in the other, "Komaru makes other people write her essays for her."

Caught up still with solely abhorrence, Togami offers a signature scoff-eyeroll combo move. "If nothing else, I'd be rid of that leech for your own benefit. There isn't a thing she could-"

"Could what?" She swallows, then pauses as stiff as her dropped conversation partner, crouching downward for no reason other than to match the sudden tension. Togami stares lasers to his right side, where Naegi sits in just the same bored posture. Rivulets slink down his fingertips, straw gliding the quench of water unto his tongue. He pauses, too, once he notices the scrutiny on him. The sip fades down through the opaque drinking straw when he removes his lips' suction to speak.

"...What's up?"

"That's..." Togami's volubility rivals that of a toddler learning his first bits of lexicon. Much as that very same toddler would, to get his point across, he lifts an index to direct it toward the issue at whole.

Lush bangs conceal his quirking brows, knitted into outré. That lifting, training, directing point guides his eyes to the cup in his hold. He starts a second, "Wh-?", but comes to surfaced recognition quick as thunder claps. "Oh, sorry." Against the oak, the glass glides to its original possessor. Whatever minor awkwardness present is laughed off as he reaches to take the correct drink from his initial spot across the table. "I was kinda wondering why it didn't taste like root beer."

In all irony, all hellsent, toxin lollipop center, the water is just what he needs to quell the smoke in his veins. The smolder breaks into treetop fires that scald his abrupt rouge.

"Hah, you guys kissed." Soy sauce is cleaned from the corner of her mouth with a tongue. Komaru takes to stuff her face again, but the noodles slip from the ends of her chopsticks just before her waiting, now gaping, maw. "Like, an indirect kiss," she explains to their dual agog. Soba breaks between her gnash. "When a guy sips off a girl's drink after she already did, or, whatever."

Or _whatever_. Togami flames at the face, the lips, the tongue, the core. _Still,_ too, once they've melted to neutrality and met evening's end, and he's respecting his hosts with a bid goodbye. The hearth of him's calmed to crackling smog post half hour the incident, willed again by divine intervention in Naegi's insistence upon walking him home before they're to leave. Behind the blood in his ears, he hears a vague suggestion his father's made of driving back to campus, but evidently Naegi has more debate in his system than he does atoms, because the next thing either of them know is the crack of gravel beneath their feet.

His hands sleep lax in his trouser pockets. "So," and he's already kicking himself for the ineptitude of the single conjunction.

Naegi strolls not far off, tipping toes to concrete sidewalk. The nearing-night skyline is a haze of murky purple and forgotten sun. "So..."

Haze. Togami falters quiet enough to cast not attention. "Are you planning on explaining to me what the point of this evening was, or am to be left in eternal uncertainty?"

"The point?" Headlights blaze a gleaming moment past them. "Um...I don't know. They came to bring me home for the weekend, and wanted to grab dinner before heading back. So I asked you to join us."

The way his story comes across is decent enough for those of moderate kin. Decent, yet it does not escape his radar, how the way his story comes across is as if it coincides to a spur of the moment situation. Last Togami checked, spur of the moment situations are not given invitations to a close twelve hours prior. If he had to guess, he'd picture the conviction in Naegi's face and voice and form while coaxing them to stay for an evening meal, and their confusion in response before ultimate agreement. And he'd picture the little flutter in Naegi's innards at the idea of a date, no matter the circumstances, it's still a dinner date, he's still walking him home and resisting the urge to link hands for real this time.

And then he realizes projecting his own feelings onto others probably is not healthy, so he cures his fantasy syndrome and goes about replying, because that's how conversations work. Shame neither of them hold the barest traces of magniloquence.

"Byakuya?" Their steps are slow, and they're teenagers snuck out past curfew, and they're ancient savants with trust aged behind them. "I...can't stop thinking about something. Something that happened earlier."

_Neither can I neither can I neither can I neither can-_ "Which is..?"

"When-" One two two one, step, slow, gradual, soft, one two. It's cold and it's mid-November and tomorrow can't come quick enough, but she'd be throttled should she put on haste. "When you were talking about my sister's friend. And you said she...you said she went to _our_ high school."

His misstep is certainly detected this time around, as it'd be a full blown face plant without the catch of street lamp. He coughs, and he damns himself. So simply is the undoing of clear thought when presented before staggering, care-absorbing contempt. He'd slipped up, and he'd said _our_ instead of _mine, mine, mine_ as is standard. He'd slipped up, and there'd been no lamp to save him then, and there's hardly explaining it now.

"Do you..." He wets his mouth. "Do you remember me?"

In the most searing of truth- only if he's forced to. When brought up and shoved down his throat, he _can_ recall the little sixteen year old in his homeroom, he _can_ recall, in all the bustle of Hope's Peak Academy, he can recall that blank-faced nobody who always seemed to be laughing with someone, or attracting light to the lightness of himself, or, or, _or_. He recalls, very suddenly now, that the time that day was eleven:seventeen. And he recalls that he'd been wearing a watch.

"...Vaguely," he answers, drowning in nonexistence. "I've been thinking it over, as of recent. I've been... _reminiscing,_ for lack of a better term."

It seems the _right_ term, that should be used regardless of what may be better. "Oh. Well...I'm glad you _vaguely_ remember me."

"As am I."

It seems the _wrong_ term- more wrong than anything he could have said. The street lamp's glow shines on a smile, either way.

Then he's just been walked home by a cute boy, after being treated to dinner by a cute boy ('s father), and all he can picture himself doing is planting his lips to this cute boy's cheek and thanking him for all of it. But the idea's of the most ridiculous to ever cross him. The slate wipes clean, loitering in the hall with a cute boy, and- for fuck's sake, stop thinking him _cute, he's not cute, he's not cute, he's not cute._ The slate wipes clean twice over, mingling in the hall with his key in his grasp and a softness to his whole being.

"I will see you Monday, then."

"Right. Monday." He nods. "Have fun with your alone time."

More than definitely, he will. Naegi shifts a shoulder forward, and Togami shifts the key into the slot, and both halt in tandem to newfound words.

"And, ah..." The quirk to his mouth is so terribly pert. "Thanks for the indirect kiss."

He gives a swivel of irises. "Goodnight, Makoto."

For the record, he thinks it's a nice name, too.


	10. Chapter 10

He'd forgotten what it feels like to wake up alone.

To be clear, it feels awful. Worse still, after having grown accustomed to the warmth of the sun before having drawn the shades apart yet, to the scent of sleep mingling amidst twisted bedding- having to only make one bed feels awful, likewise, though based solely on principle there.

He hardly feels a character all his own without the dynamics of others anymore. Naegi had taken on step into his life, more so an impressive bound forward, and somehow managed to open him up below his noticing. Within the past months, since trading in divine luxury for a shoddy college dorm, he's filled his social quota more times than in the expanse of his life as a whole.

Naegi had been correct in his tearful soliloquy; everything is _changing_. Change, he'd always heard, is meant to bestow positivity. Change is supposed to turns rags to riches and water to wine. And he'd rather enjoy a glass of Cabernet.

The contrast of his lone self being set still personable is one he's determined to claim back, determined to pretend he'd never met anyone anywhere ever, and those are his own jackets hanging in the closet over there, and those are his own stupid posters on the wall. Right. Because Togami Byakuya remains Togami Byakuya in the presence himself alone. A very tepid presence, though presence all the same.

The tedium of solidarity breaks him sooner than imagined. Moonlight glints milky against its charcoal canvas.

But, again, he's tenacious in his plight to deem his woes untrue. He's determined, determined, determined, and those jackets and those posters and- and there's a closure of eyes before they reappear to scan over the latter. He's yet ever delve into what would be called _interests_ of the anyone he'd never been anywhere. Mostly for rationale that he's never cared. What is it to him what games Naegi likes to partake in, or music he listens to most often? And, he supposes, while he still does not care, that's he's at least the subtle curiosity enough to search the musician's title scrawled in white font against black across one flyer's center. He doesn't understand why someone would want to blink one hundred eighty-two times, and he doesn't understand, once the video he'd selected drawls from his computer speakers, how a person could ever willingly listen to this, ever willingly say they _enjoy_ the whiny punk dribble and waning guitar riffs. It intrigues him just enough to notch higher the volume before returning to the novella in his lap, but finds it serves more distraction than background noise; a sigh guides his forehead to rest down on the pages, detesting the way his knee jounces on its own accord.

Then he lifts his head in a whip, because realization tends to draw that reaction.

He’s alone.

Noticed long since, never so thoughtfully considered. He’s his room to himself- he’s the whole _building_ to himself, save for the occasional straggler without desire for holiday. But he hasn’t been granted the slightest sound since he’d arrived home last night, which he wishes he’d noticed sooner and was able to appreciate. He’s still the whole following span of days to appreciate it- appreciate all of it and everything, appreciate the fact that he _is_ in fact alone, free to express any whim that should surface. He could trounce the halls nude, should he so please. Could crank the volume of the shitty punkrock to full capacity (he does) and rifle through his desk drawer for an item he hasn’t had use for in a startlingly long time (he does that, too, and the key card feels strange in his hands, now).

Cabernet had been his crave, yet he settles for the tang of vodka, anyway. The fridge whirs quietly in the dark cavern of the half-bare bedroom. He nudges it open and stands straight again with wolverine claws of four tiny glass bottles.

Being in here sets a tingle to his insides, cold and tight and egregious. Kuwata’s bed is unkempt beneath the laundry strewn over it. He hopes the lacy pink bra intermixed with it isn’t his also. But, as so often, he doesn’t give a shit; the doors to the refrigerator and room shut one after another (because, as he the pessimist has always believed, when one door closes, another door closes) and he meanders back to the quarters across the hall. The seal of the first bottle breaks as the others are set down. It’s tart as all hell, obviously, but he’s a masochist when it concerns throat-searing alcohol. Two drinks finish as a third song begins. Total fluency in western vernacular is a strive for him, but he’s far from illiterate. What he picks out of the lyrics aren’t so terrible, even behind that godawful, adenoidal shrill of the lead singer’s caterwaul. If this is what all American bands sound like, he wonders why the entire nation’s population hasn’t committed a mass self deafening yet.

He blames, indirectly, the music for his headache in the morning. Indirectly, because it’s a string of this did that and that did this, and he blames his dream on music and his headache on his dream, so all in all, in conclusion, sincerely, he decides to never listen to punkrock again.

In itself, the dream has been rather pleasant; he just wishes it had been more dry.

The tile of the laundry room is gelid against his bare feet. Sheets fill the washer just as contrition fills his soul.

Against an opposite set of dormant front loaders, he leans back the slightest bit with arms folded. He’s ashamed, almost penitent, for having behaved in such a bawdy manner, conscious or not. He’s ashamed, very penitent, because the night-long reverie hadn’t even included there whom the one he’d- if he were absolutely forced to choose -the one he wouldn’t mind bending him over a table and fucking him raw with words of filth drooling into his ear- he shakes himself freed, simply saying _sleep with_ would prove sufficient. But, none of it matters, because the stupid sex dream had nothing to do with Naegi, nothing to do with anything salacious of the sort. A stranger had taken him, marked him in bites and left his dream-self and live-self both trembling. He cannot decide what strikes him more galling, the mere fact of his nocturnal emission, or the fact that he’d had his dream virginity stolen by some _nobody_. The only one who deserves that is- is just _nobody_ in general, not _a_ nobody.

Though...perhaps an exception could be written in if that nobody had pretty eyes and a breathtaking smile, and tiny little constellation freckles over his nose, and told him the time was eleven:seventeen and listened to terrible emo music in his spare time and was being missed oh-so-so-so badly while on weekend holiday with his family at the moment. And if that person happened to be his roommate, well, that’d just be spectacular for its convenience alone.

Spreading fresh sheets over his mattress’ corners leave him winded; not from the exertion of it, but because realization tends to draw that reaction.

And, wow, is he ever head over heels for Naegi Makoto.

And, fuck, fuck-

“ _Fuck…_ ” At least the first step to recovery is admitting the problem. His face falls to his hands for a long, long string of moments, seated in the midst of rain-scented clean blankets. His face falls to his hands, and he breathes into them as one would utter devastation. The fingers drag downward slow, enough to expose his eyes to light, of which reflects against the line of glass bottles neatly placed along his desk’s edge. His snatch to the closest nearly shatters it. Those eyes that’d just been allowed sight again water at the corners from the speed at which he swallows. Drinking solves most every issue. Drinking, and unfocus, a sudden idea he thinks remarkable.

Unfocus is the stepping into house slippers, the dropping of them on each a stair, each a trot through the brick path to the administrative center square. Unfocus is the brisk tapping impatience as he awaits the vending machine outside the desolate cafeteria to drop A-16 down from its coil. Unfocus is focus, too abrupt for his liking, and likewise outside the range of his meager toleration prances forward in full regality.

He pauses, because he hadn’t anticipated any acquaintings, and because being seen in his state of loose flannel and unbrushed flaxen is his definition of personal purgatory.

“I was beginning to think you actually didn’t have arms,” Kirigiri jeers, glancing over those for once exposed by short-sleeves. To his best ability, he hides them into his chest, snaps back, “And I was beginning to think you weren’t so obnoxious, but I’ve clearly been mistaken.”

She lifts a knuckle to her chin to peer sidelong at him. “Rather interesting that we’ve hardly even spoken to one another, yet you’ve already chosen an opinion of hatred toward me.”

“You find it _interesting_ that people hate you?” He refuses her gaze, focuses in unfocus instead on the plexiglass concealing the myriad of snackfoods before him.

She appears thoughtful a moment, though is in a constant state of such. She appears thoughtful, and then she says, “You’re right. It’s not interesting; it’s funny.”

That’s more than enough to catch his attention. The last person to laugh at Togami Byakuya- well, no one’s ever _laughed_ at him, in a scornful way, at least. And Kirigiri is no exception. She does not laugh, or titter or giggle. She keeps her state of pale apathy as she continues forward with even more fuel to this so discussed _hatred_. “Especially considering I’ve been nothing but helpful to you.”

“ _Helpful,”_ he spits. “You’re about as _helpful_ as a garrote around my neck.”

“Perhaps,” she agrees, drops her hand to fold on opposite elbow. “If you’d continue the comparison to equate the strangulation to your very clear infatuation with Naegi Makoto, then, yes, call me a garrote.”

He’s learned to keep composure upon mentions of his _infatuation_ that so many’ve seemed to think they know of. He stays calm in his murmuring, “Your implications are embarrassingly incorrect, I do hope you realize.”

“Which implications?” More toward him comes her swivel. “The ones regarding your feelings for him, or the ones of my aid?”

“All of the above.”

“Even though it was my guidance that make your relationship move forward.”

A noise leaves him akin to a scoffing gag. “The only thing you did was tell me to do what I’d already planned on.”

“So,” she begins to reiterate, “you’re saying you would have done just exactly as I told you, without me having told you to?”

“Naturally.”

The expression that graces her next does him only ill. “You would have agreed to a date without me having told you to? You’d have _kissed_ him without me having told you to?”

He isn’t sure whether his silence is caused by sheer inability for answer, or for the reminder of the yesterday’s yesterday’s yesterday that never happened. The rock is her interrogation, and the hard place is her thinly veiled amusement at his gawking atrocity. The rock is _no,_ and the hard, hard, hard, unyielding stone hard place, is _yes._

“You’d do all that on your own,” cures his stun, “and yet, you have no feelings whatsoever.”

“...Right,” he says, glaring downward at her. She nods, not the faintest trace of emotion giving way through her stoic mask. Repetition comes from her, though unlike the first. _Right_ as in, right, sure, that sounds good. Not _riiight, suuure_ as he’d expect, but, simply, “Right.” And she shifts to take direction toward the exit. “Enjoy your cookie.”

In her empty-handed disposition, he wonders what she even came down here for, other than to torment him. Were that her actual goal, then she’s due for a congratulatory party.

But it isn’t her torture to give. It isn’t her prerogative to force his admittance prematurely out. To the naked eye it may not seem as though she’s trying, but _he knows_ she’s trying. And something so fragile as emotion belongs nowhere in sight of her harsh rulings. From the time taken to come to terms with what fragile emotions he may bear, to the impromptu discussion, to the stiff walk back to his room, he's started to already question them, all due to the listed middle, all due to an annoying bitch with no capacity for staying within her own business.   

Maybe he's _not_ head over heels for Naegi Makoto. Maybe he's just, chest over knees. A miniscule crush brought about by nothing other than their constant association with one another, nothing other than the the intoxicating musk of cologne on his pillowcases, nothing other than how wonderful the world seems each time he's graced by the sound of his voice.

...Neck over ankles. That's as much as he's willing.

The shortbread tastes so suddenly bitter on his tongue.


	11. Chapter 11

It's his own fault for ever leaving the building at all, ever leaving his bed at all. He remembers his original plans of never stepping foot outside his door throughout the vacation's entirety, and he thinks it his smartest yet; where the world at large is cold and disorienting, the thick plush of comforters treat him as royalty, and he finds himself tented beneath them with books and notes propped by him on occasion. One occasion meets him, the next afternoon, in which he's forced to shimmy his way out in trade for a shower, and his hair's still dripping to his clean cotton shoulders when the click of entrance turns involuntarily his head.

Wheels drag behind him, bag's metal handle propped up and grasped in his hold. Their eyes meet, lock, burn. The first thing he can bring himself to say, tossing a damp towel into the corner hamper, is a apathy-riddled, "What's that look for?"

_That look_ is his face-splitting shit-eating grin, and glimmer about his whole, tightknit being.

"I'm just..." Naegi begins, guiding his bag to the end of his seat taken atop his bed. "...glad to be home."

His snort is a sardonic note of smoke. "You were hardly gone."

"I know that!" comes back at him. He's staring at the ceiling, next, hair's crest brushing the coolness of the wall. "I just missed my friends. Kirigiri stayed here, too. Did you guys hang out at all?"

He yanks his gaze away from the line of navel that pokes out from his position of dangling legs and flat back. Neck over ankles.

"No, we didn't," is his response, dry through the center. The only _hanging out_ he'd like to do with her would involve three meters of rope and a warrant for his arrest. He flicks his bangs as he sits.

Naegi gives no response other than a pucker to his mouth, a tap of the hands on his abdomen. Togami, in all hesitance, pins him with a questioning of his break, which Naegi shoots back answers to in splendor.

"Komaru told me to tell you 'hi'." His smile's less brilliant now, though detectable regardless. "She likes you. She thought you were really funny."

Dignity rushes forward his scoff. _Funny-_ and in the mind, the tape recorder clicks, loops back, _it's funny_ from a day ago's wake, and the acrid flavor of shortbread cookie fills his mouth. But it's not in the same way, he's sure, but it's not in the same way of intentional scorn. Naegi mentions the rare visit from a distant relative during his stay home (some sort of great aunt thrice removed type situation, Togami collects), of the very early won't-come-by-again-until-next-summer Christmas gift he'd been given, and he rolls himself to perch at the end of the bed at a reach for his bag.

"It's like this little...cat statue thing? I don't know. I guess it's supposed to be lucky, or- oh." The unzipped fabric parts around his hands, shuffles of wrinkled outfits moving to reveal what he blinks down at. Then he _beams_. "I totally forgot- check out what I found in my bedroom closet."

Before he can move to do so, Naegi's invading his bounds to place himself down aside him. The item, a longer than wide hardcover, plants atop his thighs. He reads the title, and nearly does he succumb to a laugh.

"Our yearbook," he says despite it being obvious, obvious from it being written in abrasive font on the front, obvious from the slick pages he flips through to uncover faces not the smallest bit familiar to him.

Naegi nods, even though it's so obvious that it needs not response. "Yep. From sophomore year. I found a couple from middle school, too, but... _yikes,_ I don't need you seeing that."

Satire smirks his lips as he turns slowly the following page. Boxes frame portraits all similar in their such conspicuous accounts of _tilt your head and smile!_ He comes to the only section he'd cared truly to find, and, in his eyes, there's only one picture on the page, in the row for L-N, and the one beside him nods again at his immediate point out of it.

"Yeah, there I am," Naegi says. "I don't think I even brushed my hair that day, to be honest."

"You still look-" _cute. You still look cute with unkempt hair. You still look cute with the highest amount of imperfections possible._ Molars fall to a grind. "...the same."

The real-life version of the photograph laughs. "I guess I haven't really changed all that much." His reminiscence switches to ornate excitement. He prods a photo higher up. "Look, that's Kirigiri. I forgot how long her hair used to be."

And because he's no interest, Togami searches instead down the line above. "...Fujisaki?" He's heard that somewhere before, someone other than its common usage as a surname.

Wintertime tidepools are his look in response. "She was one of my best friends," he says, skimming a finger along her picture. "She went to a different university for computer technology stuff, though. We've kinda lost touch recently."

Lagging memory catches current, leaves Togami in a quiet marveling. That's the one, his head tells him, that's the one with the wall-knocking. That's the one whom brought across the hall roommates into initial meeting. He feels a sense of deference, a muted, far off sense, thinks it a shame he's never to know this person, and this person is never to know of her impact on his life. Their recent loss of touch makes him reel, as well; he imagines the same ever happening between he and who sits beside him now, a look of beach fog in his _gorgeous_ eyes, and he feels he could vomit. And just months ago, the same reaction would have been found in the thought of ever taking closeness with another person, not at all at the dissipation of it, and everything really is changing, and the faintest touch of red wine mingles among his lips.

"Oh, hey," is the nail file to the bars of his trance. A little _tap_ lands to the book. There's a clear grin marring Naegi's voice. "Who's that?"

"Some bastard who forgot to straighten his tie," Togami says in scrutiny of himself. He squints, mirroring the thin scowl in the image itself. "I suppose it isn't my worst look."

Assurances leave Naegi, sliding the book into his own lap. He stares lengthy beat, fingers tightening slight against the edges. "I think you look really...handsome..."

And then it's...and then...and then it's just...

Then it's- well it's as if the planets have all aligned in their orbit for the sole purpose of crashing from space all at once. It's as if the hummingbird controlling his heartbeat has just sapped a shock of energizing sugar pollen. It's as if he's leaning inward, and his breath is warm and his sagacity dispersed; it's as if Naegi's the catalyst to a firework with the turn of his eyes so innocuous onto him; it's as if Togami is pressing his lips right onto Naegi's, and- and it's not _as if_ , it's _it_. He's kissing him, mouths flush together. He's kissing him, and that's the only thing happening; _he's_ kissing _him,_ but nothing reciprocates. And though he's an inward disaster of cotton candy magma, the feel against his mouth is flat resist, so he churns reluctance into motion in a gradual opening of eyes and pulling back of head. Naegi's serene a moment, those sleeping lips drawn tight. He faces the opposite wall. The book meets in the middle, arms resting flat to the cover.

"Byakuya..." is his mumble, and Togami's hard pressed to detect the meaning behind it. He's struggling, too, frantically so, to concoct any excuse for his actions. He doesn't think Naegi would be gullible enough for his claims of having, _whoops,_ fallen forward, completely by accident, particularly after the clipped tone that next slices him. "You're...so _fucking_ confusing."

"What?" His wide gaze follows Naegi's sudden rise. He places the yearbook atop an empty spot of desk top, and takes into a pacing forth and back.

"I can't figure you out. It's like, one minute, I think you like me, and then the next, you're pushing me away." He shrugs tightly, lets his arms remain in the open pose. "I'm not...I'm not _mad,_ I just don't understand."

Well there's something they've in common, then; Togami crosses a leg over the other, fixes him in a blade's edge peer. "And, _what-_ you believe you're entitled to such knowledge?"

Naegi's gawks an irate measure, coughing a scoff of a breath. "Well- _yeah!_ I mean, I'd kind of like to know if I should keep getting my hopes up for something more to happen, or- or if I'm just going to keep being _strung_ _along_ like this."

"You'd like to know?" he says, and he stands. "You'd really like to know?"

Silence is answer enough. Togami takes defensive, takes slow, thrumming steps, then pauses, freezes, halts, inches from him. His fingers clench at his hip. Naegi's a flashing lighthouse, luring ships to safety. Naegi's a siren, chanting mortal croons of his half-moon irises. And he would, he would like to know. He'd like to know just what Togami's doing, just why he's stuck so still before him, air the thinnest layer of late autumn's lake frost. And it's _silent._

Togami pawns his poise off for a backward jerk of shoulder, a grabbing of the door and slamming of it behind his retreat. An ignorance tends to the shout imploring he _wait-!,_ because there's nothing for him to wait for, nothing for him to wait for. Nothing.

And nowhere to go.

Campus bustles with its gradual awakening. Students arrive in intervals, returned from their weekends of freedom to prepare for the sequencing day's onerousness. He shifts by a girl too busied by her cell phone to pay attention to where she walks, grousing airy to himself, It's drowned out by the chime of bell.

The seat he takes is one in the corner, is _the_ one in the corner, metal tough against his back, and he thinks. Heat wraps a fist about him; he's so _angry, so so angry,_ for no other reason than one he cannot determine. It's late afternoon, watching idly the show of passersby in his peripheral. It's late afternoon, and feels it spring morning, feels it a death of all things right with the curve breaking his straightlined reverie.

"Jeez, who killed _your_ puppy?" He looks left, and he's no puppy, he's a full grown rottweiler with a snapping snarl of scissor teeth.

"Piss off."

"Cool it," Hinata barks back. He frowns deeper at the glare he receives. "My manager said you have to buy something if you're gonna sit here and stare out the window for another half an hour."

The glower hardens. "And just whom is this _manager?"_

"Me." He drags the second chair backward to prop him. "Look, I get that we're not... _close_ , or whatever, but-"

"But what?" It's a snap akin to closing jaws. "You want me to _talk_ to you about what, according to your minimal knowledge, is _bothering me?"_

A thoughtful pause. His arms shift against the chair back they rest atop. "People tell me I'd make a pretty good counselor."

Togami huffs, vision peeling elsewhere. "Fine. I'll tell you my problem." His chest presses outward the slightest fraction, brow raises, lip sneers. "Your coffee tastes like shit. I hate it."

Brown eyes take to catching light in a narrowed pierce. "Okay, _rude._ No one's forcing you to drink it."

"That's just the thing," he says. "No one is forcing me to drink it. But I can't stop. It's awful, and I hate it, and I keep drinking it."

Hinata pinches his expression together. "Then, stop coming in here."

"How?" The pinched expression relaxes in place of startled confusion.

"Well, I don't know." Confusion, confusion, confusion. "Just...control yourself, man."

"I... _can't_." He tips forward to rest elbows on the table, hands mingling in frustrated grips of his hair. As he rambles, his eyes close. "I can't stop coming in here. I can't stop drinking the coffee. And now the coffee thinks me an idiot, and even if I _want_ to drink it, it will not even want to be drank."

"...I'm going to make an educated guess here," swirls slow from the second, "We're not talking about actual coffee anymore."

Togami tosses another glare. "Amazing deduction. Are you majoring in mystery solving?"

He says a humorless _ha_ , rolling eyes deep back. "I don't know what your deal is, but it sounds to me like you just need to make up your mind. Go with your gut."

"And did your _gut_ tell you to cheat on your girlfriend, or was that your brain?" It's a low blow for a tall rise, and Hinata looks up toward him in abjection.

"Neither. But good job bringing up something _totally_ irrelevant." He shoves the chair back to place, and moves to reclaim his position of occupation behind the counter. "Remember what I said about not coming in here again? You should take that to heart."

Togami decides he's absolutely _sick_ with being thrown demands at. He's the last one who needs to be told what to do, like a child being guided through life. He's done with listening. He's done with obeying. He's so fucking _done,_ that he just about _sprints_ out of the shop, with the idea that he'll most certainly be back. No one can tell him he's to never enter a place of public domain. No one can tell him _anything-_ he'll be back, he'll be back, he'll be back.

In fact, he's on his way.

He's breathless upon his slam through the door left unlatched since his departure. Disturbed is the placidity of the resident on its volume. Togami catches a length of recuperation, blends caution into pulp. His hand raises and his lips part, and he's everything he's to relay at the nerve-endings of them, and he's everything and nothing and everything alike, and his everything shifts from his prone position buried in the corner of his blanket mass.

"Can you turn the light off, please?"

Togami falters, but flicks a finger to the switch regardless, and prattles in normal sharpness, "What's wrong with you?"

"My head is killing me," is discerned from the muffle into pillows. Naegi doesn't flinch the slightest quirk of muscle.

The reluctance to speak is evident by his curtness. Togami can't bring himself to be soured by it, instead just the opposite. "I see... Is there anything that would help you?"

A groaning syllable trails the inquiry- one more out of sheer manners than actual crave to be aidful. But he gets his response, either way, agony in each slurred drone. "Can you see if Ku...Kuwata is back yet? I never got the migraine pills from my nightstand."

Though he speaks affirmative a soft patois, it is with umbrage that he turns to pass the murk of the hallway, rap twice at hard oak. Minutes sever his patience, and he lifts a hand to knock more prudently, but the target swings inward and he's facing tart familarity.

"...Yo," Kuwata starts, sliding his palm down the length of the doorframe. He darts his pupils. "Uh...what's up..?"

Five minutes post meets the rattle of a bottle in hand, and chase crawling after his lack of assent.

"Naegi, I hope you feel better!" he shouts over Togami's shoulder that's attempting to edge him back out. "I miss you, dude. You gotta come h-"

" _Goodbye_ ," clips both Togami and the slam behind him. Naegi whimpers at the commotion, but manages to take sitting position. He wards off the screaming throb to open his eyes enough to spy the medication offered toward him. Wretched- the pills exchange hands in a fleeting brush, and his achy little request for water garners a cover to Togami's quivering mouth, a harsh breath out to quell it.

"Here," he says, tossing him him a bottle from his desk. Naegi does his best attempt at a grapple with as little movement as possible. The hard blinks he gives at the catch spark white through his skull

"...I don't think I'm supposed to mix these with alcohol."

"You do if you want to feel better."

The tip of his head equates to a blessing _good point._

Togami accepts the half surfaced drink again, sets it back to its spot, and _observes._ Observes, examines, studies, the pathetic struggle to hide his light-sensitive eyes deep into his pillowcase, to slide in place with as minimal exertion as can be possessed. He almost pities him, pours sympathy out for what must seem a fate rivaling demise. Naegi must surely be suffering a mighty deal. And he is, so, so mighty, so, so suffering. The fingers that skirt through his hair do help a bit, though.

Outward breathes a sigh. Togami notices how quickly he relaxes at his fawning touch. It's nice that, even without being told, he knows he's appreciated. And it's nice that the fluffs of brunette are so pleasantly soft against his hand.

"Byakuya," he mumbles after some time of the petting and the easy breathing. To the indicative hum in return, he continues, "Should I forgive Kuwata?"

His silence is mistaken for uncertainty. When it drags more, Naegi provides unnecessary further explanation, "I mean...it wasn't really his fault. I can understand why he'd be mad. Mistakes ha-"

"No." _No. Forgive_ _him_ is synonymous with rendering all of Togami's work _futile._ Forgive him? That's _ridiculous._ Considering, as far as Naegi is concerned, Kuwata'd lost his mind over his own idiocy, forgiveness is not deserved. Considering, as far as veracity is concerned, Kuwata'd done no wrong but react to wild misfortune, there's nothing to truly even forgive. So he's told the question _no_ , for each of these paths lead to it anyway. And, perhaps a tad for lacking altruism; spending one weekend alone had been too grueling for him to crave ever the length of it forever onward. So he's told the question _no,_ and now's he's to clarify.

"Don't. You've no reason to." To his intake of air, symbolic of refusal, "He broke the lava lamp, Makoto."

Naegi seems to contemplate a moment. "...I guess I can stay mad a little longer."

The massaging drags in long, gentle strokes. They're of equal placation when Togami moves as light as he can manage to lay his head down on the pillows aside the other. He continues the soft touches and soft breaths and soft feelings, second hand left to rest at Naegi's waist, which loses its tension soon after.

"Byakuya."

Togami takes his time with another humming reply.

Likewise, Naegi's speech is slow, sleepy. "...I'm sorry about earlier."

Nothing more is said from him to back it; nothing more is needed. It's a soft, soft, soft everything is so so soft soft soft- it's a soft apology for harsh quandary, but theren't be sequela for long since remedied. The pets tell him, in their gentle lengths, that it's all alright; the weight of fingers at his hip tell him that it's all alright, that it'll all continue to be. And Togami pauses, purses, and the last thing he remembers is the flush of his cheek exposed above the sheet, the pad of lashes against it.

Never has he been so glad to have trusted his instinct.


	12. Chapter 12

The shatter of warmth is what wakes him. Rouge fades a palette's mixture into indigo. A candidate for rain is the striping clouds, and the plunking drops against the shingling outside make him long for the pleasure to keep curled within the comforter around his shoulders. But, blanket and all, he's _freezing,_ and that is what ruins his repose in the first place. It must be so for the thieving of it lost; the wrinkle of sheets gone cold to his side, back forced flush to the wall from depleted space on a full size bed meant for one. But he _is_ only one. And in some strange, embarrassing way, it's as miserable as the dreary weather.

He's still dressed, glasses and shoes all, when he stands to let the blankets drop off his shoulders. The crick to his neck is uncomfortable, though he rathers it there.

"Sleep well?" It pokes through the slats of the desk divider, from _his_ side of it, prompting a quirking intrigue. He cranes his neck around the obstruction, and answers the question with a question; "What are you doing?"

From his spot, Naegi replies, "Making us even."

He's at his side in a single push of legs. His computer rests, open and inviting, in front of his wandering interest, scrolling through random messes of files and research reports that mean nil to him. He's the stress to clamp a hand on his mouth, the fret to guide pondering about having or not cleared his browser history recently, confirmed in hindrance, after more idle grazes through his photo gallery, "I didn't know you like Blink-182."

Like _what?_ He, as ironic as it may be, _blinks_ , and recalls the night of shitty punk music and liquor. Liquor- which, once his eyes scan over the table, meet a neat line of three emptied bottles and the fourth now matching. He smirks. He smirks, but it flees him in a matter of seconds at the further travel of glance. _  
_

"What the hell is that?" Adjacent the bottles, a taller portion of glass sits in what he feels is personal mockery. Naegi, once having dragged attention from the screen, pales a note that tells Togami he hadn't been meant to see the piece.

"Oh." He bites his lip in a way that's just _irresistible,_ no matter the circumstances. "Kuwata came by and gave it to me, and we talked a little bit. I think things are good between us again."

Togami scowls, because, one, he hadn't asked where it came from. Two, because the idea of them reconciling sets him into hot disdain. And, three, of course, because there's a fucking bong sitting on his desk.

Good morning.

"You are _not_ smoking your... _marijuana,_ in here," he says, and that's most certainly not sarcastic. Naegi waves a hand, then grips with it the stem, leaning back in the office chair and examining the pipe absentmindedly.

"Nah, don't worry. I only ever really did that when it was his idea." He replaces it to rest against the center divider. Wheels swivel, time passes. "You're really comfy to sleep with, y'know."

Rolling dice are his blue eyes. He nudges the chair several spaces left on his stalk past to his closet.

"You'd better not still be there when I return from my classes," he warns, laying a jacket across his unused bed.

"Mhm." Hands fuss to shut the computer, claiming it back to its slot in his bag. Naegi watches him all the while, mouth a tight, muted thought. "I think I'm gonna take a chill day. I'm still feeling pretty... _eh_."

Togami nods once. "If you feel you need it, then do so." His words hold sincerity, though he cannot deny that he'd been contented with the thought of sharing their Calculus period today. Perhaps time apart shall do them well.

Time apart does do them well, does them as well as time together, time spent in their soft cotton reverie, time spent with quiet music and eyes quieter still, and the gentle hum of the skyline draws them into sleep.

And times when shit is absolutely hitting the fan.

He can hardly believe, can't fathom why, doesn't understand it, but the four digits have not changed despite their threat to, and 0205 is perhaps is most favorite number in the world. Funny- he'd've forgotten about the entire ordeal were it not the week's prior morning entailing of _making them even._ He's the desire to disbalance the scale ever since, and does so with deft swipes of fingertips.

So wrong.

Scrolling through the messages brings multiples new to light, and he notices the conversation of whom he can decipher without even reading the name; in which he'd been begged to, _hey_ _can_ _we_ _talk_ , and the _talk_ had led him to the midst of the shared hall to reconcile misunderstandings. He notes an update to a different ongoing drama, one of which has been granted a change of title.

_(Sunday, 6:32 PM) hinata: hey that togame guy came in again and he was acting like a fucking freak is he ok_

_(Sent Monday, 8:40 AM): sorry i just saw this  
_ _(Sent Monday, 8:40 AM): mmm yeah i think hes fine? We had kind of an argument yesterday but things are ok now_

_(Monday, 9:01 AM) hinata: he called you coffee_

_(Sent Monday, 9:05 AM): what_

_(Monday, 9:12 AM) hinata: yeah it was some big metaphor about how he doesn't like coffee but can't stop drinking it  
_ _(Monday, 9:14 AM) hinata: like ooooook buddy_

_(Sent Monday. 9:15 AM): that sounds like it was about actual coffee_

_(Monday, 9:24 AM) hinata: idk  
_ _(Monday, 9:25 AM) hinata: i think he's crazier than komaeda tbh_

_(Sent Monday, 9:29 AM): whatever tbh i still want to fuck him_

The shock of it's enough to manifest physically; it jolts his fingers into startle, jolts the phone from his standing height to face first on the floor by his feet.

He prays, prays, prays some more, that the sharp _clink_ had been a cause other than-

The spiderweb shatter up the screen's entire right side.

The dilemma's aeons more pressing than the causation of it. Though he's still a shade warm from having read the message. But- he doesn't need anybody to fuck him, because he's just so royally done it to himself with his own clumsy hands. He stands, gaping for any possible remedy before the owner of the device returns from his nighttime shower.

Then the owner of the device returns from his nighttime shower, and Togami wonders if defenestrating himself from this height would be enough to stop his heart.

Naegi tugs higher the towel at his navel. If he weren't so wrapped up in paranoia, Togami would snap an asking of why he never brings clothing with him into the washroom. Droplets plink from his hair as he scoots by to grasp his closet's handles.

He wishes he'd had the intellect to turn around earlier, because when he does, he's fully dressed in nightwear and tossing his towel into the hamper across the room. It misses, and he laughs about his lack of coordination while going to retrieve it. Togami, facing strict forward again, feels the grip of death teasing his ankles, and the tease of voice gripping his ears.

"...Is that my phone?"

The recognizability is in the situation rather than the phone itself. Togami had said himself, he hardly uses his own, leaving the only other option presented in his question. Naegi pouts warily, extending to capture it back, but stops in light of a gasping that Togami had feared religiously the sound of.

"What _happened?_ " He is able to take it, leaving Togami with free arms to fold, and Naegi with wide eyes and sullen aura.

"It..." he starts, then clears his throat, and he's _Togami_ , and he barks, "You shouldn't leave things where they can so easily be knocked down. How was I to prevent my hitting it when you were so careless as to leave it on the very edge of the desk?"

Those wide eyes soften to aim downcast, and Togami is still Togami, just not _Togami_ Togami. "...I'll reimburse you for the repair costs."

"No!" It's quick enough a response to surprise them both. He shakes his head. "No, uh, that's okay. It's no big deal. Plus, it was my fault, anyway."

"Makoto," he says back a puzzle, "it's no issue."

Again, a shake of head, water flicking to around surfaces. "No, really. I don't care. It was an accident-"

"Why are you fighting me on this?" What bewilderment he's got for the mere fact of it multiples at his resulting reply.

"Because I said _no!_ "

Silence. They mesh thunder from the debating temperature collision. Naegi sparks pink at the ears, frees his hand in a toss to hide his face. The bed he plunks down on is not his own, but it's nearest to him and boundaries are for idiots anyway.

"I'm sorry," he groans. "I didn't mean to snap at you. I'm just...I'm so stressed out, but- but that's still no excuse for being a dick."

Togami observes his wallowing acutely. "It's fine," he allows, because it is, it's more than fine. "What's troubling you?"

He wonders who the fuck said that, because it certainly could not have been himself, his stone cold, uncaring self. But evidently it was, and Naegi lifts up from his palms to whine, "Finals week."

_Ah_. "Surely you know that's not for a near month."

"Tomorrow's December first. That leaves me eighteen days to memorize an entire language that I can hardly say my own name in."

_Ahhh_. Togami lingers in his spot, swivels a touch at the waist. "Did you ever look into that tutor idea?"

If he had not priorly, he does now; looks into it, looks directly into his hailstorm eyes that reflect contempt and narrow in waiting. The silence of it is binding. Togami, catching comprehension at last, scoffs. "I told you, I've better things to do."

" _Pleeease_ , Byakuya." His pouting parts the clouds to the hailstorm. "You're my only hope of passing."

And he's to refuse, again, as saying _please_ and batting lashes does not erase his reluctance, but the flick of his tongue next surely does.

"I mean, it'd be a nice thing to do, considering you just completely destroyed my phone, and all..."

For someone so pretty, Naegi's awfully malicious.

* * *

"This one."

"...Uh...to bake..?"

"Bike. Fucking, Christ, Makoto. _Bike_."

"Sorry, sorry!"

He'd think he'd be less of a total dunce after a full week's worth of cramming. The flash cards choke in his grip.

"This one," he grits, and holds up the next. They reside opposite one another, each at a side of the university library's table. The routine of studying in their bedroom had been debunked by too many distractions and too little variation, a key to keeping the mind sharp. They'd relocated for Togami's hope to awaken his brain cells by a change of environment, and for Naegi's pleasure that being in a library means he can't be yelled at anymore. Impatient and temperamental are traits vastly undesired in a teacher, and yet, he'd gotten the job anyway.

When the card reading SWIM is guessed as a meek _to_ _sing?_ , he slams it flat to the table beneath his palm.

"How can you possibly have been studying this language for half your life, and still not know the difference between common verbs?"

And because the answer to that is the same shrug of shoulders as it is every study session, Naegi skips over it. "Maybe we should take a break from vocab for a while. Can we work on question formation?"

He supposes, while still taxing, it won't act so much so as detriment to his forbearance. Naegi is moderate in his level to distinguish interrogatives from declarations, credited by himself to the use of punctuation in the manga he frequents. Where he falters is...everything else.

"Okay, so," the student starts, tapping pencil's tip to notebook page. "You need a question mark, I know that."

He sighs though his nose. The notebook slides across the tabletop, and he reads a phrase that, although technically of correct grammar, is still clunky nonetheless. "Ask me how I am," he instructs, hoping it simple enough, and it is; he nods at the perfectly formed _how are you?_ His next order is at his lips, when Naegi stops him to press, "Answer it."

At the interruption, he frowns, scribbling a messy _annoyed_ in cursive letters that Naegi peers at protracted enough for the clock's long hand to click through two digits. The pencil taps again, and Togami sighs again, and takes the page below his own pen.

"List the question words." He writes them as they're relayed to him, having only to coax out the beginning syllable to jog his memory of _where_. Nod, praise, slide. "Now turn them each into a question."

Though he grouses at the imposing task, his attention drops and the only sound to follow is the quiet scribble of graphite against paper. Togami relaxes in his spot, drumming fingers in waiting. The afternoon's foggy and crisp beyond the bounds of the library, easing into the oncoming season of snow. He's sore at the thought. It's not the worst of his woes, but slush and ice are yet no friends to him, and imagining having to jaunt between classes in the mess of it makes him wish he'd never taken up contemplation for the forecast. The weather's an easy thing to focus on; it averts his thoughts from said worries, worries entailing his own exams within the coming weeks, though he's quite confident with his intellect enough to ace them each. Exams are not so much a worry as they are an inconvenience, a sap of his free time. Such as is his activity now, teaching a subject that should by this point in their lives be second nature. And the one he's teaching it to- now, _that_ can certainly be counted a worry.

Naegi sits back, alerting Togami to look up expectantly at him, but the shake to his concentrated frown and the expression of thought carries him back to into a crouch above the writing. He relaxes again, and that's just the thing; he _relaxes_ when Naegi looks away from him, when he hasn't the need to be impressive in conversation. He's a constant mess of constricted nerves sans his consent. Naegi Makoto's a larcenist; he's stolen his ease, stolen his articulation, stolen his heart. He recalls back upon the instruction to _be himself_ that he'd so spurned, though thinks it now a tip to follow better. Then, because thoughts are true to connect by the most meager of margins, he thinks of the one who'd given the tip, thinks of his work, thinks of coffee, thinks of the text conversation about the coffee, thinks of the end to the text conversation, thinks of how hot his face must be, and turns it a quick note left.

Were he given the chance to agree to it, he would. But, more so, more so without the need for lusting crave and burn and crackle. He's a man of simplicity. He's a man of tender touches and easy, tired breaths after a long day's end. He's a man of lazy kisses in the morning and rough ones at night, and all the sweet lingering ones that fall in between. He's a man of romance. He's a man that belongs only to one, certain someone.

That certain someone pokes him in the wrist with the eraser end of his pencil, and Togami swerves around his inquiring of his wellbeing to examine his finished work. Out of their overall precision, he'd grant them a rough sixty percent accuracy. Each one's has its own faults- a misspelling here, improper conjugation there -but he finds them all coherent, and the little mistakes only make them better, he thinks.

"Byakuya?" is said after some quiet while. "Are they right?"

He peeks over the top of the notebook to the precious crystal of his wondering eyes.

"They're perfect," he says, dropping the pages to the table again. Naegi gives a short cheer to his accomplishment.

He's staring, staring, staring at him, as if he's the planetary canvas of the night's sky, the Louvre's magnum opus, the deciding final seconds of a match to wind. He's staring, and it's not just staring- it's _looking_ , it's absorbing. And it's thinking, because he does that so damn much. Thinking about a forecast aside from the one behind the skyline.

When Togami again lifts his pen, his fingers tremble around it. "Tell me what this says."

Naegi careens forward in his seat to watch the letters as they appear on the page one by agonizingly slow one. The notebook takes a one-eighty, and he moves back to match it. The poke of his tongue across his lips drives Togami to further inanity that he's already basking in on his own side.

" _I,_ " he starts, squinting at the neatly printed calligraphy. " _I think...I are small."_

"What?" It's a useless thing to ask; Togami scowls as he prods the words. "It says, _I think you are..._ blank."

Naegi twists a look of adorable confusion toward him. "You...think I'm small."

" _No."_ Well, yes, but this isn't the time for it. This is the time for _exasperation_ , apparently, as it's all Togami can feel. "Spell out the last word. What does it say?"

He drawls unsurety. "It says _C-U-T-E. C_ _ute._ Isn't that when you cut something?"

"That's _cut_ ," sneaks between his clenched teeth. He tosses his forehead into his palm, and thinks his strategy gone stale. The notebook passes between them yet again, and he leaves angry strokes of ink on the next line down. Naegi appears akin to a deaf man who's just been asked his favorite song. Togami melts into silent seething.

" _What you-"_

_"_ Will _you."_

He blinks at the correction, then nods. " _Will you...will you go!"_ The self satisfaction at knowing certain of a word makes him grin before he goes back to decryption.

" _Will you go...out...with them."_ Another blink. "Oh, wait. It's a question. _Will you go out with them?"_

Silent seething turns to a pound of a fist to the paper, and a turn of head so quickly up he fears a diagnosis of whiplash. "You absolute _moron-_ it says, _will you go out with_ me?, not _them! Me!"_

"Oh, right," he smiles, running a hand through his bangs. "So... _going out_ is like, going somewhere. And you're asking someone to-"

"For fuck's sake, Makoto!" He throws both palms to the table top, effectively startling Naegi into hush. He looks up toward his lividity, shining in such breathless perfection, Togami finds it almost difficult to continue. He gathers himself, and in the crisp hiss of their native vernacular, "Will you go out with me?"

The stages of reaction display in his face bright as Christmas lights.

Instinct. "Oh."

Working. "...Oh."

Understanding. " _Oh."_

The Christmas lights glow a hot sanguine. Togami forces his glare sideways, as meeting his eyes would surely result in his own immediate combustion. Everything he's worked toward for the past twenty years, every layer of acedia he's built up, of malignity- it's gone, washed from his system in a matter of months. It's gone, and he's gone, and he's got this nasty case of lovesick, and he's head over heels and heart on his sleeve, and he's just gone and committed a crime to his dignity, and to all that's he's striven for his whole life. He's pulled the first thread of an unraveling stitch, and now his palms are full of string and he's fallen apart at the seams. And, and, and-! And it's all so wonderfully sickening, and he feels he should soon succumb to the ticking detonator in his chest. And it's all so disgustingly delicious, and there's a slide toward him and he's peering down at written conversation.

"I hope I spelled it right," just barely pokes through his barrier of warbling ambivalence.

Inside, he's choking, sweating, a wild disaster area bound for demolition. But despite the burn, the stinging slice up his middle to rid his viscera liberated, the shaky little _yes, y-e-s, yes (n.), why-ee-ess, yes yes yes yes yes-!_ is unmistakable, and the weight vanishes from its strangle about him. The single word, penmanship suffering from wobbles of hand, is the needle that mends him back whole. He takes to the space beneath it, like its all a game, takes to the space beneath the tiny little itty bitty minuscule word that means absolutely _everything,_ and scribes a message his own.

Naegi, skin still pricked rose and shoulders contracted in indescribable delight, gains the final exchange of notebook. Exhilaration blinds him further illiterate than normal. He opens and closes his mouth, closes and opens, opens, "...I don't know what that middle word means."

He rolls his eyes at that, but there's a mood still to cherish, so he defines the unknown word in demonstration. And- _really_ -he doesn't understand the surprise he's greeted with when he presses his lips to his, because _of course_ that's what a _k-i-s-s_ is. And, really- it's thrilling. And, really -it's a two way intersection this time around, dual compliance to the intimacy of mouths meeting. Togami kisses him, kisses his high school acquaintance, across the hall neighbor, ... _friend,_ friend, roommate, strange _something_ he can't quite place, and now, though he's still tentative to claim it, _boyfriend-_ but it doesn't matter their status, because it's just _Naegi._ He's kissing Naegi Makoto, and it feels their first, and it feels the only he'll ever need. The lips against his refuse level, strained into curvature that bleeds the sweetest harmony. And Togami- he finds it a contagious rapture, and smiling, while a strange phenomenon to him, feels inexplicably... _nice._ Because everything about kissing him is nice. The feel, the taste, the mere fact- and the knowledge that, from henceforth, it's to become commonplace affair, and that only widens the strange-nice sensation tingling his lips.

They decide to cut the study session short today.


	13. Chapter 13

Nothing could act as ruin to feeling. Nothing could damper the faultless, faultless chain that links them.

"Yeah," leaves his tongue, and it's the middle of a conversation he's hardly comprehending, only from the lazy haze of earliest morning hours, and they're talking just as before, just as always, slow drags of mouth and mind. Just as before, though it's not the space between sides that keep them separate, it's the briefest spaces of limbs, the grace of laying on one's side with their other pressed the same. Because that's what friends do. Friends who kiss and cuddle and think of each other as their soulmate. "Yeah," he's just mumured, curls tighter into the arms over him. "I was _so_ close to it, too. If my phone hadn't rung, we'd've been already together for, like, a month by now."

He breathes in the heat of his hair. The hand he rests at rounded hipbone sinks further forward the most silent fraction- and everything's silent, the wind the room the night. "That's on the assumption that I'd agree."

"Like you'd ever say no." Movement meets then not, so much so as to find fret worthy. "...Would you?"

The wind the room the night. He moves to kiss the space behind his ear, and they both suppose that's answer enough.

"And...since we're admitting things," he coughs the slightest note to mimic ease. "I have another thing."

The other hums to urge it out; anxious squirming disturbs his hands. "...I've sorta had a crush on you...for an embarrassingly long time."

Brunette flares from the hushed air of cynic. "And you think I've been so thick as not to realize?"

"Well, no." It's all heat and flame and hearth of chest. "I kinda figured you knew, once you started kissing me at random, weird times."

"Random and weird," he says, as if questioning them, as if resenting them. Naegi twines the fingers at his front.

"Just, y'know...looking through a yearbook, after the lava lamp broke. Random."

He likes to think he's a rather precise person- to _think_. Surely, they've rhyme and reason. Surely, he'd been so overcome by his passion for the beauty of everything in those random, weird moments. But he tugs him nearer, and he saves himself with, "At least I had the will to actually do something about my feelings besides wallow in them."

" _Ugh_ \- I know." Comets cast though hazel. He removes the shield gone to his face to fall back into that interlacement, simpers stupid at himself. "You remember that first night we met, where you came to complain about the music? ...I may have...- _God_ , this is so embarrassing, but-"

"Let me guess," he interjects. "You were hoping the volume would lure me out and we'd have an excuse to talk."

The head tucked before him bobs into a nodding, and there's another laugh that sounds too mortified for its own good. " _Kiiinda_ pathetic."

"Believe me, I've committed my share of _pathetic_ advancements," he assures. Naegi shifts.

"Oh?" His smirk reads rather tempt. "Like what?"

There's a hesitation in his tone, in his grazing fingertips. He knows it not an issue of any longer cruciality, but thinks it all the same a touch of ignominious. So he chooses to follow the calm of the night and the room and the wind, and the early hours that manage to draw out deep conversation. "I'm sure you remember the incident regarding your change in rooms."

Naturally; he nods again, and Togami goes on, "I perhaps could have had something to do with that."

Then it's not the nighttime iridescence of sated speech, it's the slice of ridges within it. "...What do you mean?"

He lolls his shoulders into a shrug, sighs out not yet existent stress. "Think it through. How else would loads of equipment just _miraculously_ vanish, then return to its original spot unharmed?" The lack of response relays in his head as lack of need for it, and there's a second sigh as he settles down further. "It was quite genius of me, I must say."

"I can't believe you did that..." he says, stiff at the edges. Where there next comes accepting of thought servitude, is that ridging slicing back over. "I can't _believe_ you did that!"

Cacophony, catastrophe. Naegi tears himself freed from the hold on him, stealing warmth into the hot of his mood.

"You- you _sabotaged_ my relationship with Kuwata like that? And for what?" The rage presented is an uncharacteristic terror as he paces. "Because you were _jealous?_ "

How ugly a word. Togami places himself righted, legs swung over side, hands a clamp at each a thigh. "Not-"

"Do you know how mad he was at me?" A mixture of dolor twitches within the seething. He shakes his head, grabs useless at the air. "That was...that was an _awful_ thing to do, Byakuya."

He'd never thought it _awful_ \- more so clever, cunning, shrewd. But Naegi's called it _awful_ , called _him_ awful, and he feels... _awful_. But Naegi's called it awful, and that's just plain rude no matter the circumstance, so he crosses his arms and points his nose in the air like the perfectly pompous bitch he loves to be. "Regardless of your opinion on the situation, it's over with. There's no point now in getting so riled."

A gape challenges his statement. Naegi glances about, then directly back to him, expression rid now of instinctive anger to relay instead incredulity. "You could at least...I don't know, _apologize?_ "

Remorse has never been worth his time. Neither has communication, period, though he's been trying lots of new things as of recent.

Apology will not be one of them.

"You expect me to apologize for something that's done no harm?" Sarcastic clicks replace his voice. "Fine. I'm sorry for wanting you closer to me. I'm sorry for thinking you're the most wonderful person I've ever met."

Naegi perks on instant; "...Do you really?"

The haze of moon buried in his eyes sinks thorough into a thinning crescent, and he turns a whip of covers over a shoulder. "Just shut up and lay back down."

Delayed is his compliance. It follows in a shifting, a settling, and into the face of the wall, Togami takes role as this time being embraced, and Naegi's chin fits so puzzle perfect into the crook of his shoulder it should be a crime. Whatever ailment of ire taken over them is filtered through the sieve's holes, blown gone by the pressing nuzzle into his face and all over dissipation in better's favor. But Togami- he's a mess of inner trembles that tell him naught of his indecision. A week's through of their mutuality, their _together_ together that turns his heart to the dove's silken plumage. A week's through- hardly even; four days, not that he's counting every single second to ensure they're even real -and they've met the inevitable hook of heel in road's fault; and it's a just a stumble, not a full blown trip, but it's a stumble that makes him wonder if his impulse had been worth his shaking hands with his trust.

And then those lips press soft to his cheek, and there's a loss of breath and the arms around him compress the faintest bit, and he's only once ever before been so glad to have trusted his instinct. 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this monster is finally done...Bless up........
> 
> sorry i havent been replying to individual comments lately but wwwaa i appreciate them all so much tysm for reading my work

"So," Naegi says to him one morning. It's the penultimate math class before winter break, the final before the final, and they've been granted free reign on the hour to use as a period of inquiry regarding the test. Hands fly up around the room, but they've no pressing ponderings, so they sit back and listen to the others that do. But it's boring and they're bored and it's boring, so their minds have waltzed elsewhere, and Naegi's apparently found something worthy of sharing, because he's just said _so..._ and Togami gives the indication that he's listening by the tilt to his chin. "Now that we're...wait, we're dating, right?"

He wants to say yes, he should hope so, but that just sounds desperate, so he settles for a nod and Naegi relaxes aside him. Their elbows brush at the midst of the desk. "Okay, so now that we're dating, can I tell people about it?"

"...I don't see why not." But he _does_ see why not. Sees it, envisions it, in the faces of whomever would happen to know of it, sees their judgement and confusion. He sees why not, but sees so many more why _yes_ (if that's even the opposite- lately he's been finding it hard to care for anything besides the heart that beats in sync to his and the weight that sleeps curled under his arm at night), and they're all so sweet that he makes himself bid assurance. Naegi nods once, a happy chatter melding his mouth next, and Togami can't remember why he ever found it an irritation.

Calculus ends just as it does each time. Scholars travel in waves through the exit, and they linger among the dispersing crowd with as little space between them as possible.

Snow kisses the tips of their hair, bites teasing what skin is left exposed. Winter's of moderate stun. Togami tugs the length of his scarf to tighten it against his neck.

"So," Naegi says to him one afternoon. The crowds around them rush as if the snow is raining hellfire. Wisping clouds of breath surround every word. "Now that we're _dating,_ can I...hold your hand, and stuff?"

"And _stuff,"_ Togami mocks, his huff visible in the December draft. He does not stall their walking in his reach betwixt them. The fabric of two gloves separate the flush of skin on skin. He feels the squeeze of gentle fingers around his, and returns it in a rhythmic beat. Bright is the sky, just peaking past noon, reflecting to the stark of soft fallen blizzard. While the air is chilling, their hands are warm, their eyes are warm, their everythings are warm- and they're their own personal everythings, and everything else is nothing.

And they're in their room- _their room! their room that's so, so_ theirs, _more than ever before! -_ and they're poring over flashcards and notebooks and there's incentive in correct answers, and each time something should be properly pronounced and defined, their lips meet swiftly and odds for success skyrocket alongside their pulses. And their, their, _theirs._ Everything is theirs, and everything is wonderful.

"So," Naegi says to him one night. His haunches are comfortable beneath him, and ruffled blankets more below still. Candle smoke billows from the heat of his mouth. "Now that we're dating, we can do _stuff..._ right?"

Not _and_ stuff- _just_ stuff. Stuff that leaves them messes of clutching sheets and curling toes. Stuff that Togami so very badly yearns for. He beckons him forward with the flick of his tongue and the moonlight glazing his bare eyes. It's all so _awkward_ , and delectable all the same, and Naegi Makoto certainly has a way with the swivel of his hips that drives him _wild_ , and the shades close everything off from their everything, as if they'd need nothing more to pacify them ever again.

His arms lax and his lungs weep, drops down a heaving mess onto his chest. Embrace comes indolent around his middle. Naegi kisses sweet up his jawline. They're their own everythings, and everything is perfect.

"Apparently Mioda's having a Christmas party," he mumbles into his shoulder after a sated bout of recovery. The blanket lain to just above his waist shifts with his movement to lock attenuated bedtime gazes. His brows lift above the pucker to his mouth. "We're both invited."

" _Wonderful_ ," drones back; the choice of topic's a slit to his tongue.

The cut's mend is the laying of cheek to his chest, the fingers delicate between. "Well, I think it'll be fun. Maybe it'll work out better than the last one."

"Right," he says in a breath. "Perhaps it won't end with one hundred people screaming and fleeing for the exit."

Naegi laughs, his sweet, sweet angel's chime, runs a hand down his bicep in an idle, stroking motion of comfort. "Yeah. And maybe you'll actually understand that it's supposed to be a date this time."

Togami _chokes_ up, "A _what?"_

Then that laugh's not as sweet, sweet, but more so heathenish.

"You're so cute," and he nuzzles further soothed. Beneath his cheek, the circadian thrum battles thunder.

So cute. He's so cute, and they're so cute, and they've got all the time in the world to continue. Togami, though- he'd much prefer time spent focused on more he than him, more them than he. And Togami, though- he feels the twinge of saccharine behind each his teeth with every brush of fingertips and graze of eyes.

He'd think it better time spent focused on them and their perfect little everything they've built up, than the click of his steps to snow-blemished gravel path. But he keeps a steadied self regardless of the mind array, regardless of what next awaits him.

He enters his first class of the morning, exactly on time. The questions below his pen are facile. Essays and exams do him no trouble; he'd truly, simply like to get them out of his way more than anything else. They pass, as he's sure he has, likewise, and the trip to his last is a practical dash across campus. At the perfect tick of ten:fifty-two, he's in the back corner seat, the one he'd chosen specifically for its original lack of companion. But, as of right now, its missing its designated companion- it and _he -_ and Togami can't seem to quell the clench to his throat when ten:fifty-five rolls onto his wrist.

Then he's to quell the throb to his chest, because there's hardly seconds between his sudden entrance and his appearance by his side, and Togami hasn't even the chance to relay planned comment before there's hands on either cheek and lips upon his.

"I love you so _freaking_ much," Naegi says beyond bared teeth once they part. If he weren't already reeling from the surprise kiss, he'd stagger at the words, falter at the stapled stack of pages thrust into his face. " _Eighty-one._ Can you believe it?" He sits heavy to his chair, admiring the pomp to Togami's- to his _boyfriend's -_ expression as he examines the grade at the top of his English exam. "And it's all thanks to those study sessions."

Togami wouldn't want him to discredit himself, though far be it from him to refuse praise. He accepts it, and he shares it. "Congratulations. You've managed to impress me."

His elbow pumps into a semblance of triumph. "That's a bigger accomplishment than the test grade."

Said test grade passes back to the earner of it, and they settle into quiet as the far off front row begins to be gifted blank print outs. They hold each a pencil, each an easy, lovely, stupid little mood. Mingling in the undertones of breath, Togami whispers to his side. "And, if you care to know, I do feel the same."

The confusion quirked toward him is a paralyzing charm, and the blush that chases realization draws a smirk to his lips.

Neither of them earn scores to be too proud of, but distraction's a winsome mistress.

What they _do_ earn is the touch of boxes exchanging hands, the freeze of ice under feet, the plasma in their veins turned cinder at every fleeting acquaintance of skin.

"You're _positive_ you'll be alright staying here?" Naegi says to him. Exhaust fumes mimic their dancing breath. "Two weeks is a long time to spend alone."

And Togami, curling his arms over his waist, answers, "You do recall my original state of solidarity at the beginning of the year?"

He smiles up at him, because, while he does remember, it seems like forever, seems like yesterday's separation from this one's a decade. Time forgets to pass just as they do with ill fortune.

"Okay. I guess this is better, anyway. You can keep Kirigiri company." He humors at the forming sneer, then takes sobriety. "...I'll miss you, though. Make sure you text me at least _once_ while I'm gone."

Breeze carries a hush of snow across the pavement. Behind them, the open back of his family's jeep latches with an echo. Togami's hold tightens as he nods. And because it's so inevitable, his lean forward grants him just what he wants, as everything tends to, and the kiss is warm cider against his lips, mouth, tongue. Naegi's toes strain upwards in his boots to meld then nearer.

It's perfect, and he's perfect, and they're so perfect, it's screamable.

" _Gross!_ " works rather than any worthy scream. It parts them enough for a turnaway. Into it, Naegi's eyeroll is subtle, is playful.

"Just get in the car, Komaru."

She responds the way an good terrible little sister would; her tongue prods out pink at him. When she straightens, she's her refined, near adult self again, and the bounce to each finger announces her leave. "Bye, Togami! Try not to suck face with my brother for too long- I'd actually like to make it home before Christmas."

"I can't promise anything," he calls to her giggling, retreating form. From the driver's window, an arm extends in a similar wave as he'd received prior, and his one offered back holds sincere vim.

Naegi grins as he faces him again. "My parents really like you. That's good." Absent fingers graze up his arm. The rich cream of his eyes fades when he glances up again. "Not as much as I do, of course."

Repetition follows in his lackluster, "Of course." The smile's still there on Naegi's mouth when he bends another time to claim it. It's a dip of his back and a cup to his heart-shaped face; Togami throbs at the core.

The sunder is a smooth parting. Naegi allows his eyelids generous time to flutter separate. Togami looks down at him with that devastatingly handsome and devastatingly effortless face of his, melting the one in his arms to utter adoration.

"I'll see you soon," promises into another center meeting. "Two weeks isn't that long."

To the corner of his lips insists, "Not at all."

Were it not for the impatient knuckles rapping against the backseat window, they'd've been candidates to stay put, to stay locked into touches until the snow be replaced by budding blossoms and tracks of beach sand. Naegi glances over a shoulder at the heart traced in the fogged up glass, and teasing grin behind it. He laughs into his fingers, then brings the very same up as a beckon for compliance. Togami leans forward enough for secret to press against his ear. A frown scrawls about him.

"Yes, right. I love you, too." He blames it on the inebriation brought along by the lingering taste of kisses. "Now go. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and all that."

His nod is as stiff as his step from the curb, and Togami's set to bid farewell and trounce back to his dorm when the shock of fresh warmth returns to him. The tug to his scarf coupled with the mesh of tongues leaves him struggling for purchase.

"Okay, _now_ goodbye."

If he could speak, he may return it; silence appears his meager relative, a distant uncle to the nephew of his raised hand to the trail of tire tracks through frost. He straightens, and takes the steps two at a time, because it's a wonderful thing, truly.

Being in love, that is.

It's wonderful as it is messy and deranged, and all of the guards he'd built up his whole life are total blah-blah-blahs, and every last whatever means nothing to him. He's never held back from waking up each morning, never met restraint in the knot to his tie and the shine to his shoes, and the overall normalcy of every day's routine. Nothing's ever stopped him, and all the same, he's never had a reason to continue any of it. He's himself a reason, surely, now, a reason too lovely to deserve verbal description alone. His reasons keeps his work done and his shirts tucked, draws him into the covers at dawn and kisses him senseless at every opportunity. Though it cannot be accounted for his tendency of himself, his reason's the reason he's reason at all.

Beneath him cradles the cold depth of sheet. He's long since let it disperse from his mind the sensation of filling a single bed sole. The placidity of it, though tranquil to lull, deafens him to a point of restless. Being in love is a wonderful, fantastic, heart-pounding show-stopping bliss, and being without it's the theft of his health.

He leans to one side to fumble with his bag's pockets. The cool metal against his palm prices familiar in a dubious twinge, but this one is his truly, and what he reminiscences so unfondly of should soon vibrate against the waiting hand of another. His fingers click quiet against the screen.

_(Sent Friday, 3:13 PM): Two weeks is going to be a lot longer than I'd imagined_

To pillows, he leans back, sets the device to his side table flat. A sigh rumbles in his mouth, though soon after does it lift a tugged note at either corner.

Everything is a breed of sweet he's yet to try.

And his grapple to answer the chime at his side is a swift spark of electric anticipation.

He supposes it's possible to make room in a cage of a tight-wound heart if it's only for one special, certain someone.

He supposes it's possible to alter one's opinion about the world's total abrasive abhorrence if there's a single shining wonder among it all.

He supposes it's possible to bloom by the guidance of another's tender coax.

Togami Byakuya is living proof of such a feat.


End file.
